[wix-users] Failed to load wixproj with VS2013

[Helge Kruse]

Hello,

I have several WiX projects. The recent projects are built with WiX
3.10. I also tried to take a look at WiX 3.11 and found that the
VS2013 integration has been remove from the WiX 3.11 installer and a
VS has to be installed. After creating a new installer project I saw
that this is only compileable with at least 3.11. I share the projects
with other guys using a source control system, and I don't want to
force them to upgrade their WiX installation to version 3.11. For that
pupose I want to downgrade the WiX installation to windows 3.10.

I uninstalled WiX 3.11 as well as the VS2013 extension. After that I
installed WiX 3.10. But now I can't load the project in VS2013
anymore. When I open the solution I get a message box.

    One or more projects in the solution were not loaded correctly.
    Please see the Output Window for details.

The Output contains one line per project:

    C:\Path\to\MySetup.wixproj : error  : Error HRESULT E_FAIL has
been returned from a call to a COM component.

The same solution and all containing WiX projects load okay on the
workstations of the other guys. They are identical since they are
synchronized by source control system.

If I open a wixproj instead of the solution then VS2015 is launch and
the wixproj are all loaded successfully. That's strange since the .sln
file is for VS2013:

    Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 12.00
    # Visual Studio 2013
    VisualStudioVersion = 12.0.40629.0
    MinimumVisualStudioVersion = 10.0.40219.1

The message about the HRESULT E_FAIL is not very helpful to detect the
problem. How can I recover my workstation and work with VS2013 with
WiX 3.10?

Best regards
Helge