I hope someone on here might have some sort of idea of what could be going on.

I have 1 solution that I constantly update using VS.net 2003.  My Windows XP Professional machine is running IIS 5.1 and has been working without a hitch for almost a year.  This is a simple ASP.net/C# solution and I do not work with multiple websites or actually host a site with IIS on my machine-IIS is only running to support the development of this one solution.

Starting in late June, when I try to open the solution in VS.net, it never gets past "Connecting to Server to Open Web project".  The popup "Open Web" just hangs forever.  When I finally end the process it crashes and sends an error report to Microsoft.

IIS is running as it has been for a year, and I can ping localhost.  If I try to view the project via HTTP/browser that also just hangs.  Stopping/starting IIS doesn't help.  I have changed nothing in IIS.

The only new application I have installed on the machine recently is Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition, but this probem did not surface until 1-2 weeks after I installed that application.

I have uninstalled McAfee to see if it could be a McAfee update that triggered a firewall issue, that didn't help.  When I remove Front Page Extensions via "remove windows components", this allows me to connect to the solution and do most of what I need to do, but then I can't use the "copy project" functionality in VS.net.  As soon as I re-install Front Page Extensions, the problem happens again constantly.

I saw someone else suggest possibly deleting my profile-I tried creating a new user and logged in as that to see if the problem was still there, and it was, so it's not related to my user profile.

I also used XP system restore to reset the system to a time before this problem started, that didn't work either.

One thing-I did try to fully remove IIS with the hope of trying to reinstall it, but the uninstall of IIS hangs at less than 10%.  So it seems for some reason I can't remove IIS, so that's a little concerning too.

I can't find anything else on the web on this issue and am stumped. 

Thank you to anyone that might have any ideas.