Visual studio (whole thing) 2010 fails to upgrade older solutions?

Question

Visual C++ 2010 constantly fails with upgrading Visual C++ 6.0 Workspaces to the new format. It keeps having problems with the same project file, which opens perfectly in Visual C++ 6.0 (Which I'd really like to refrain from using.) I also tried importing only the project file with no avail, and then even just moving the headers and code into a new project, which obviously doesn't work. (the project was the SoundFX 2000 source code, by Software System Consultants)

I also attempted to open an older version of a C# Workspace, and that failed to. Its always the same error: "error", no more, no less...

I'm running this on an old, XP machine (for backwards compatibility testing). On my 7 machine with Visual C# 2015, it had no issue converting Visual C# 2008 code. Does anyone know what is going on? why can't I convert it? how can I get a more detailed output than just "error"

Answer 1

In order to get detailed info of the error, add the following section in the configuration section and after configSections section in the devenv.exe.config file located in Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE subfolder of the VS installation folder:

<system.diagnostics>
      <switches>
        <add name="CPS" value="4" />
    </switches>
    <trace autoflush="false" indentsize="4">
      <listeners>
        <add name="myListener" 
          type="System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener" 
          initializeData="c:\VS2010Debug.log" />
        <remove name="Default" />
      </listeners>
    </trace>
</system.diagnostics>   

This will create the file c:\VS2010Debug.log (you can change the name and location obviously) after VS is restarted.

Next you must create a cmd file (e.g. VS2010.cmd) with the following contents:

cd /d "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\ide\" 
start devenv.exe /Log
exit

Again you must edit the above path according to your own VS2010 installation location.

This will log VS activities in a log file located here (by default):

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Version\ActivityLog.xml

Start VS 2010 by executing the cmd file, convert your project and examine the log file for additional info about the conversion errors.