The VS 2008 (include VWD 2008) cannot switch to design mode. The display area of the designer will be dead (see screen shot). I've tried reinstall them a lot of time and the files should be ok.

I even tried to remove the folder "Microsoft Web Designer Tools" and the VS 2008 and VWD behave the same. I tried remove and reinstall WebDesignCore.exe too. The system has Office XP installed. No frontpage.

The application works well in a VMWare I installed on the same machine.

Should I manually remove some registry entries before reinstall?
 

I assume VM does not have Office XP installed? The issue may be in Office 2000. We did some testing and FP 2003 does not seem to be the issue. In fact, I have it on my home machine along with VS 2005 and 2008 and everything works. It appears the issue may be with older versions of Office, like 2000 or XP. Designer may not be compatible with them.

I was experiencing the same problem with VS 2008 not being able to switch to design view.  For me, the issue was with VS 2008 loading an older version of the fpcutl.dll file.  It needs version 12.0.4518.1066 to run correctly, which is located in the following folder \Program Files\Microsoft Web Designer Tools\VWD.  It was trying to load version 11.0.6551.0 when I could not get VS 2008 to view aspx pages in design.  

 Try doing a search on your computer for the file to see if there are two different version of the file on your workstation.

I forget to post a link to the my thread.  It is a long one: http://forums.asp.net/t/1191630.aspx

Thanks very much, I finally solve the problem by overwriting the file FPCUTL.DLL in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10" with the one under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression\Web Designer.

 This problem has frustrated me since the release of VS 2008.
 

No problem.  Just make sure by replacing the file in the Office10 folder does not make any of the office components not work correctly. 

Don't replace it. Instead, make sure you have Program Files\Microsoft Web Designer Tools\VWD before path to Office 2000/XP folder in the system path. Office should still work, it does not use path-based DLL discovery.

I made a blog post on the issue http://blogs.msdn.com/mikhailarkhipov/archive/2007/12/14/compatibility-problem-between-vs-2008-and-office-2000-and-how-to-fix-it.aspx

 I have a similar problem but only when trying to open the split-page object relational designer for LINQ to SQL classes in VWD Express 2008.

I tried each of your suggestions:

1. Verified there is no path to MS Office shown in My Computer / Properties / Advanced / Environment Variables

2. Copied the suspect dll file mentioned in your article, overwriting the dll file of the same name in Office 10 and 11. Office 12 (2007?) was installed as a trial and uninstalled; there is still a folder there but the suspect dll file is not in that folder. Also have Office 97 installed (just Access 97 to play with database hookups in VWD).

3. In addition I turned off my anti-virus/anti spyware protection temporarily (PCTools Spyware Doctor with AV).

( I think I have all the latest versions and patches for everything.)

Rebooted after the above with AV still off. Still has the same result.

Please put any replies into very simple terms, I'm just learning here (the only reason I'm fooling with LINQ is to follow the examples in a "Dummies" book to try and get some inkling of how it works).

 Some useful info here http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2008/10/03/troubleshooting-visual-studion-2008-design-view-hangs-issues.aspx

Mikhail,

Thanks for your quick reply. That article suggests the following steps; here are the results of attempting to follow those steps. Keep in mind the article is written for Visual Studio 2008 and I'm using VWD Express 2008 with SP1. This is installed on Windows XP Home SP3, and I'm running the .NET framework 3.5 SP1. (Again, everything works fine until I try to view a LINQ to SQL Class file.)

1. Verified that the web authoring component is installed.

2. Verified that the program has SP1 installed.

3. Verified that the registry contains the value: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\ProductVersion key.  LastProduct value verified as 12.0.4518.1066.

4. Looked at the FPEDITAX.DLL file and verified it is version 12.0.6319.5000.

5. Followed link from the article back to your blog, which is where I started yesterday, I've already followed those steps.

It appears that the article refers to a web authoring component that will not work at all; I have made many pages using this version of VWD Express, it is working until I try to fool with LINQ.

Having done all this, maybe I'm just out of luck trying to use the LINQ feature of the software.

 I'm still trying to fix this after troubleshooting for a month on my XP Pro SP3 x86 install. Here is what I've done so far, most of it is covered in the previously mentioned links:

1) removed visual studio 2005

2) removed Office XP

3) removed all .Net framework versions

4) used a .Net framework removal tool to get rid of any leftover pieces.

5) ran cclean to get rid of any old registry entries.

VWD2008 SP1 installed fails when installing the SQL Express 2008 stuff. I was able to get SQL Express 2008 when I installed Visual C# Express. However, I get messages in the event log saying that some template packages are corrupt or something when installing either VWD or VC#.  I have installed from the online installer and the ISO to no avail. 

 Again, I've been trying to troubleshoot this for a month now to no avail. The only thing I have left to do is reinstall the XP and try from scratch but I'd rather not do that.

This is a different case (not about switching to design view). Please start a new thread.