The error “This project is incompatible with the c

Question

I installed Vs 2010 Express in my PC, and created a poject named myproject with .net 4.0, it works well in Vs 2010 Express.

Now I installed Vs 2012 Express in my PC, and open the project myproject and upgrade it to .net 4.5, it wells well in Vs 2012 Express too.

I delete the project myproject all files, then restore it from my old backup file, when I try to open the project from Vs 2010 Express, I get the following information.
"This project is incompatible with the current version of visual studio", why?

How can I open the project in Vs 2010 Express? I guess the Vs 2012 Express maybe mark the project as .net 4.5 and stored the information in the somewhere of hard drive. Although I restore the project myproject from old backup file, Vs 2010 Express still think it is a project of .net 4.5.

Thanks!

Answer 1

In my case the problem was the Component Model Cache (Visual Studio for C++).

in VS2013 it is located in

%localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\ComponentModelCache

in VS2015 in

%localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\ComponentModelCache

Rename this folder and restart visual studio.

Answer 2

If the message "This project is incompatible with the current version of Visual Studio" is due to an attempt to open a project targeting .Net 4.5 with Visual Studio 2010, then the "solution" or workaround is to edit the .csproj file and change the TargetFrameworkVersion from "v4.5" to "v4.0". That at least allows the project to be loaded, although it may result in compiler errors if the program is dependent on 4.5 features.

Answer 3

Check the directory that contains the solution file for an UpgradeLog.htm file. It will probably show what's wrong. In my case I tried to open an ASP.NET project, but the Web Developer Tools were not installed.

The Web Developer Tools can be installed afterwards by going to the Control Panel and to modify your existing Visual Studio installation. After adding Web Developer Tools the project opened without issues.

Answer 4

If you are getting the same error for a project which is actually an extension (.vsix), please install Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 SDK

Answer 5

I know this is a little old, but just in case the above solutions don't work: don't be an idiot like me and try to open an MVC project using "VS for Desktop" instead of "VS for Web" (or vice-versa), since it will give you the incompatible message.

I use TFS at my job and I tried to open a MVC project via the TFS Solution Explorer. I wasn't paying attention to which Visual Studio version I had open and since both IDE's look alike, I was confused at what was going on - a common mistake, I'm sure =P

Answer 6

Trying to load a BizTalk Project in VS2012 without BizTalk installed on your developer machine, will result in this error and the projects will load. This should be the first thing you check.