“This project is incompatible with the current version of Visual Studio”

Question

I was getting the below message from Visual Studio 2010.

\"This project is incompatible with the current version of Visual Studio\"

Answer 1

If you are getting the same error for a project which is actually an extension (.vsix), installing Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 SDK does the trick.

Answer 2

As for me, I realized there was another web project in the solution that my VS2017 was loading fine, so I copied over the ProjectTypeGuids element of it over to the project that wasn't loading. Its diff was:

-    <ProjectTypeGuids>{E3E379DF-F4C6-4180-9B81-6769533ABE47};{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}</ProjectTypeGuids>
+    <ProjectTypeGuids>{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}</ProjectTypeGuids>

After this, it loads. Don't ask me why.

Answer 3

I Resolved the issue by deleting the files in the below folder

%localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\ComponentModelCache

Source: https://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/70388/how-to-fix-incompatible-issue-after-visual-studio-2015-update-3

Answer 4

I had this issue and after hours of uninstalling and reinstalling I found out the issue in my instance.

The reason why I got this was down to the fact that I didn't have the correct extension.

In my case the ASP.net project (my startup) was the incompatible project and this was because I didn't have the following:

• Microsoft ASP.NET and Web Tools
• Micrsoft ASP.NET Web Frameworks and Tools

It was a simple case of going into extensions and updates under the Tools menu

Answer 5

If the message

This project is incompatible with the current version of Visual Studio

is due to an attempt to open a project targeting .Net 4.5, then the "solution" or workaround is to edit the .csproj file and change the TargetFrameworkVersion from "v4.5" to "v4.0". That at least allows the project to be loaded, although it may result in compiler errors if the program is dependent on 4.5 features.

Answer 6

I just got the same error message with a couple projects after installing Visual Studio 2015 Update 3. For me, the solution was to install .NET Core