Disable Visual Studio's validation of non-xml files that look like xml?

Question

I have a bunch of Velocity template files in a Visual Studio 2008 project, the problem is that despite the fact that the extension is .vm instead of .xml<

Answer 1

I add a comment as the first line of the vm file, that way the file doesn't begin with a < and VS doesn't think it's an xml file.

Just add ## as the first line of every file then close and reopen it.