Thanks.

Okay, I think I figured this out. This is what I did and I got it to work.

To Enable Guidance Packages

1) Launch Visual Studio and open a project, any project, it doesn’t matter.

2) Choose View | Other Windows | Guidance Navigator Window

3) Once this window is displayed, select “Guidance Package Manager…�from it’s dropdown combobox.

4) The Guidance Package Manager dialog box will appear.

5) Click on the “Enable / Disable Packages�button.

6) The Enable and Disable Packages dialog box will appear.

7) Check the box next to the “Guidance Package Development.�entry and click OK.

8) You may get the following big nasty error in the following section. If you don’t, you’re good to go.

9) After this works you should now see the “Guidance Packages�entry in the New Project dialog Box.

Big Nasty Error

System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.TemplateWizardInterface, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)

Fix for Big Nasty Error

1) Unload the “Guidance Package Development�by unchecking the checkbox in Enable and Disable Packages dialog box.

2) Close down Visual Studio

3) Follow the instructions in the following link: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2370411&SiteID=1

4) Follow the previous instructions outlined under To Enable Guidance Packages. It should work this time with no big nasty error.

Okay, I think I figured this out. This is what I did and I got it to work.

To Enable Guidance Packages

1) Launch Visual Studio and open a project, any project, it doesn’t matter.

2) Choose View | Other Windows | Guidance Navigator Window

3) Once this window is displayed, select “Guidance Package Manager…�from it’s dropdown combobox.

4) The Guidance Package Manager dialog box will appear.

5) Click on the “Enable / Disable Packages�button.

6) The Enable and Disable Packages dialog box will appear.

7) Check the box next to the “Guidance Package Development.�entry and click OK.

8) You may get the following big nasty error in the following section. If you don’t, you’re good to go.

9) After this works you should now see the “Guidance Packages�entry in the New Project dialog Box.

Big Nasty Error

System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.TemplateWizardInterface, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)

Fix for Big Nasty Error

1) Unload the “Guidance Package Development�by unchecking the checkbox in Enable and Disable Packages dialog box.

2) Close down Visual Studio

3) Follow the instructions in the following link: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2370411&SiteID=1

4) Follow the previous instructions outlined under To Enable Guidance Packages. It should work this time with no big nasty error.

Please note that the version of GAX you're using was not designed nor tested against VS 2008 RTM version, it included support for the beta version of VS 2008. When VS 2008 RTMed a binding redirect changed and this broke the binding redirect that GAX was adding for the VS beta version thus causing the "big nasty" error that you describe which btw can be fixed by commenting a single line in an xml file.

The next version of GAX, now targeting the final RTM version of VS 2008 won't add this binding redirect as it was only needed by the VS 2008 beta version, and thus, this issue will be gone.