<p>I'm having a weird issue with Visual Studio 2008. Every time I fire it up, the solution explorer is about an inch wide. It's like it can't remember it's layout settings.</p>

<p>Every un-docked window is in the position I place it. But if I dock a window, it's position is saved, but it's size will be reset to very-narrow (around an inch) when I load.</p>

<p>I've never come across this before and it's pretty annoying. Any ideas?</p>

<p>The things I've tried:</p>

<ul>
<li>Saving, then reloading settings via Import/Export.</li>
<li>Resetting all environment settings via Import/Export.</li>
<li>Window -> Reset Window layout.</li>
<li>Comination of rebooting after changing the above.</li>
<li>Installed SP1. No improvement</li>
</ul>

<p>none of which changed the behaviour of docked windows. (Also, definitely no other instances running..)</p>

<p>I do run two monitors, but I've had this setup on three different workstations and this is the first time I've come across it.</p>

[{'answer_id': 9610, 'author': 'jfs', 'author_id': 718, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/718', 'pm_score': 0, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>Maybe you're closing Visual Studio while some other instance is still alive. The settings of the last instance that is closed is the one that will be applied.</p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 9623, 'author': 'Ali Parr', 'author_id': 1169, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1169', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>I occasionally get this bug, and others related to layout/fonts/colouring etc. A little trick I've found is use the Tools -> Import and Export Settings, export your current settings once you've got everything setup as you like, then close and reopen Visual Studio and import. Hopefully that'll sort you out.</p>\n\n<p>In 2005 there were some little bugs with viewing Project/Solution property panels when the Solution Explorer wasn't in its default position, docked on the left of the screen - I don't know if that's changed in VS2008, but you might want to put it back there and see.</p>\n\n<p>Now, when are we going to get decent MultiMonitor support?!</p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 9630, 'author': 'Community', 'author_id': -1, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1', 'pm_score': 5, 'selected': True, 'text': '<p>I had the same problem. It turned out that if the VS window was non-maximized, it was really\nsmall. So after making the non-maximized wider, the problem disappeared.</p>\n'}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/9601', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/376/']