Hi Al,

Sorry for the loss of time. I have seen various issues with VS.NET but have not experienced this problem. None of the other developers in our group ( about 5 ) have seen it either.

I would be interested if you find out any more info on the cause of this.

Bill

>For absolutely no reason I can tell, VS .NET 2003 refused to start today on my machine:
>
>"The IDE was not able to load Msxml3.dll." Then, "The application cannot start".
>
>The error message even recommends going to MSKB#306905: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vsintro7/html/VB_E_IDACANTBOOT.asp
>
>Just a FYI:
>
>- don't even bother trying any of the possible "repairs" shown in the accompanying article http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q306905 - they don't work. You need to do a complete uninstall, then reinstall. Believe the terse message in the first link.
>
>- in Control Panels...Add/Remove Programs, don't make the mistake of selecting "Reinstall/Repair" - you don't get any further options to choose either reinstall or repair, it just goes ahead and tries a repair. Which doesn't work.
>
>- Fortunately, a complete uninstallation followed by reinstallation fixes the problem.
>
>Actual elapsed time for me to fix this problem was about 4.5 hours. If I'd gone straight into the uninstall/reinstall route it would have been about 1.5 - 2.0 hours.
>
>This happened after using the product for almost exactly 2 months, on one small ASP.NET project. Is my experience unique or have lots of other people had to reinstall VS.NET 2003?