Visual studio 2005 crashes attempting to add new project setting in Project Settings pane. How to fix?

Question

While trying to add a new user or application setting to the project properties pane of a project, visual studio 2005 hangs and then prompts after a minute to debug or restart. Have tried deleting the app.config and user.config files to no avail. Have tried resetting the ide's application settings. Have tried hitting sychronize under the pane. Is there a corrupt file that is causing this mess? What is the solution? More info: visual basic development, vista, vs 2005.

Answer 1

I've had problems like this before. I would approach it like:

1. Install the latest service pack
2. If you've got time, reinstall
3. Worst-case, manually edit your project file to add the settings

Answer 2

After deleting the Settings.Designer.vb file and hitting 'Synchronize' under the project properties pane, it appears that everything is working again. It seems that the Settings.settings file and Settings.Designer.vb files became corrupted or unsynchronized and the ide could not recover.