>I have *no* idea what determines the sortation (is that a real word? <g>).

hehe, yes it's even in the dictionary. I probably should have just called it sort order, but I'm more used to the term sortation. I do a lot of mail related DP work and the term for that industry is sortation. However it's a bit more than just an ORDER BY clause on a select statement. It's more like 40 select statements and the industry standard is a minimum of 7 tables to describe the sort and the mailing.

>Nah, I never keep my projects in those directories anyway. I like to be able to find my stuff! I hate those super-long file paths!! <g>

I do that with VFP and with my customers job's. But for some reason I've been leaving the .NET stuff in the tree VS created. Too many directories that I'm not sure what they do yet, and VS always seems to want to default to using those directories. So it's been a bit more convenient.

>And thanks for the suggestions! Just thinking about it in a slightly different light made me suddenly think that maybe the problem was the installation all along.

You're welcome, you've helped me a number of times in the past, so I am more than happy to try and help.

Giving it more room sounds promising. I think the problem is in loading the solution, not in the conversion. And what you described is a real possibility.

If it doesn't work, one more thing I can think of to try... Another shot in the dark.

After you have it converted and the solution is opening without errors. Rename the hidden .suo file. If the project is storing the sort order it's in that file, not in the .sln file. VS should recreate the .suo when you load the .sln file.