Visual Studio Web Projects (Again)

As usual, I received the error message "Unable to retrieve folder information from the server" for a VS web project that contained a filename

starting with a dot (i.e. .SVN).  I am used to simply acknowledging this message and continuing, but for some reason this time the web project would not even open.  I was able to solve this, using the following steps:

1. Change the setting Tools/Options/Projects/Web Settings/Preferred access method to FrontPage Extensions and reload the project.  It will fail, showing the error message.
2. Reset that setting to File Share and reload -- again, failure with the message.
3. Reload the project again -- it will fail again.
4. Reload the project again -- the message will appear, but the project will load.

Thereafter, the project will load successfully (even though the error message is shown every time the project is loaded).  Black magic, to be sure.  This problem is supposedly fixed in VS2005, but I haven't tried that yet.

(this entry was updated on 2005-10-17)