Clicking 'Choose items' on the toolbox crashes Visual Studio 2008

Ok, the question is a bit older, but for the sake of completeness: you don't need to uninstall anything.

I came across the following solution at http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/VisualStudio/microsoft.public.vsnet.ide/2008-03/msg00083.html:

  1. start visual studio from the command line using: devenv.exe /SafeMode
  2. install the item to the tool box using the common procedure (Choose Items...)

vs should not crash that way. after restarting visual studio without the SafeMode switch, the added item(s) are still available.


Uninstall / Disable CodeRush or every other addon one by one until it works fine. Most of the time one of them is the problem.

I've got same setup with you, in my case it was DxCore


For me it was Visual Studio 2008 Power Commands

EDIT: I also had this problem with another other free extensions. I simply cannot remember which the other one was :(

EDIT2: I just remembered, I installed the SilverLight Tools 2 or 2 beta. This caused this issue. It also screwed up DataAnnotations with an older version and messed up Entity Framework for me. Ended up having to reinstall my machine.