I'm compiling a web site in Visual Studio 2008 and have an unsuccessful build. OK, nothing unusual yet; compile errors seem to follow me around more often than not. The Error List window presents a number of errors, but two things are out of the ordinary:

• The Error List does not show any line numbers or file names; it only shows the Error Description.
• Double clicking the error does not take me directly to the erroneous page. Quite the opposite – it does nothing at all.

I try various things to correct the problem, i.e., close VS and restart it, reboot the computer… nothing helps.

Screen shot of Visual Studio Error List with line numbers and files not being displayed:

This is what I should be seeing:

Resolution

Visual Studio 2008 appears to have a bug that causes it to choke on projects containing non alpha-numeric characters in the file path. In my case, the file path had parenthesis: C:\<snip>\SiteName (test site)\Default.aspx

Removing the parenthesis resolved the problem: C:\<snip>\SiteName - test site\Default.aspx

Conclusion

Just because Windows accepts a valid directory name, doesn't necessarily mean Visual Studio will accept the name. If you encounter this error, verify none of the directories/folders in your site's path have funky characters such as parenthesis or the pound sign (#).

Enjoy!