Visual Studio 2010 error: “Project Target Framework Not Installed” when opening a .NET 4.0 project

Question

I am experiencing a rather disconcerting issue with one of my development machines that I hope someone can advise me on.

I have a large Visual Studio 2010 VB solutio

Answer 1

Similar problem reported on Social MSDN. The unhappy solution was:

I solved the problem myself by doing the following steps:

a) because my problem occurs the first time after a Windows Security-Update for VS 2008, I´ve done a System-Recovery to get the state before the mentioned Win-Update

b) then I´ve un- and re-installed VS 2010 (including .NET Framework 4.0)

I'm just posting this because I just ran into this same error.

Answer 2

OK for me what worked historically was to manually remove newer versions of .net, then install visual studio.

In windows 10 by default has a version of .net installed that is built in (I think) so cannot be uninstalled (4.5? 4.7?), at least I think that's what's going on, I certainly cannot remove it via "uninstall" I click that and it just stays in the list (4.5 that is). So my old answer, above, no longer works.

Also another clue, when you install the 7.1 Windows SDK it says "RTM .NET version 4...these components will not be installed".

Fix was to uninstall the Windows SDK, then temporarily spoof that version 4.7 was not installed. Then install the SDK. Now VS 2010 express loads my C++ projects again (I presume what it did was install .net 4.0 successfully). Either the offline ISO or web version seem to work with this.

Answer 3

I solved this problem by repairing my VS2010 installation using the original installer.

Answer 4

I had the same problem and my solution was:

• Download Multi-Targeting Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0.3 from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=29052
• Install

The problem was solved immediately (error message went away).

Answer 5

Elsewhere I've seen: In VS 2010, the <TargetFrameworkSubset> tag was changed to <TargetFrameworkProfile>, and we no longer support "Full"; that's why you're getting the error. Until we fix this, you can just remove the <TargetFrameworkSubset> tag from your project file, and the project should open properly.

If you don't have TargetFrameworkProfile specified in your project files then in MPF (at least) it defaults to the latest. And may be confused about whether it's installed.

Answer 6

I had the same problem and tried the work around listed here.

I went to properties and chose the framework 3.5 and the errors went away. I do have the problem that although the 4.0 problem is installed on my computer, Visual Studio can't find it, but I am not using any 4.0 specific functionality, so this works for now. If I figure out why the 4.0 framework is not detectable, I'll update this post with the fix for it, too.

Edit:

I don't know WHY there was a problem, but after reviewing the help at this forum. I used this utility to fully uninstall VS2010 and .NET Framework 4.0.

I then fully reinstalled, AND I installed the Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1, and everything works!

I hope that helps someone.