Visual Studio 2008 Web Designer locks up - Fix

When installing Office 2010 on a machine with Visual Studio 2008 installed you may run into a scenario where the web designer (aka VWD) locks up and does not respond to any clicks or keyboard events. 

The strange thing about the lock up is that Visual Studio does not report as an application that is not responding in task manager.  However using Task Manager is the only way to kill the process that I have found.

Fortunately the fix the problem is easy (if you are reading this post you either follow my blog or found it via search and you are already frustrated), so here goes…

Click the Start (or some call it the Windows Flag) Button and enter the following command in the search bar:

c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\office12\office setup controller\setup.exe

if you are running x86 version of Office you will need to run this from the Program Files (x86) folder (see the command below).

c:\program files (x86)\common files\microsoft shared\office12\office setup controller\setup.exe

Right click on setup and run it as an administrator.

When setup starts select the Repair option

This process will repair Web Authoring Component causing the original problem.