For instance, just now, the bottom 5 lines of code were replaced with square boxes, the kind you would see in place of line feeds when you open a text document in the wrong viewer.

Sometimes it's more than 5 lines... I've had the whole half of a form get wiped out. Thankfully, I use Source Safe and it didn't have any changes lost, but I'd hate to lose something I was working on.

What OS and Visual Studio version are you using?

vesuvius said:

Something must have changed on your machine. Software either works badly from the start or it works well, and something [or things] alter the behavior. The can also be proven by work colleagues using the same build of Visual Studio without issue.

 

What OS and Visual Studio version are you using?

Win XP Pro, VS 2008. The project is .Net 2.0.

No other Devs here doing what I do, or using VS 2008. I'm a lone wolf!

You might be looking at a faulty drive here if your files get corrupted when you don't even open them? Sounds strange for sure. I would do a full CHKDSK on the disk or something. I don't like the sound of your situation at all, scary stuff to lose code.

qwert231 said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

Win XP Pro, VS 2008. The project is .Net 2.0.

 

No other Devs here doing what I do, or using VS 2008. I'm a lone wolf!

You're not alone. I see this occasionally on my machine as well.   When I was using VS 2003, I would see this probably once every week.  When I moved up to VS 2005, I didn't see the garbage-character issue anymore, however, I still occasionally see issues where my code blocks "disappear".

One workaround (for both issues) I've found is to turn out "Outlining" in the code.  Whenever the problem occurs, the "+\-" box for the outlining still shows up correctly, and I could always collapse and then expand the code, and it would fix itself.

It seems that the data behind the text was always still there, however, the display of the text was just somehow corrupted.

I never could figure out any pattern to causing the problem...

W3bbo said:

When you reported those boxes (used as a placeholder for unrenderable characters) I wondered if it might be bad file encoding (consistent line endings?) but now I can't shake off the feeling you've got a dying HDD on your hands.

I have gotten file encoding issues. At times, I'll try to us VSS to compare my checked out code to the previous version, on a .vb or .cs file, and get 'Binary Files Differ'. !!! Not sure why it happens some times and not others.

qwert231 said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

Win XP Pro, VS 2008. The project is .Net 2.0.

 

No other Devs here doing what I do, or using VS 2008. I'm a lone wolf!

nevermind

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/1XVPTWNkWl7mRveVP4ac5Q?feat=directlink

This happens in VB files, C# files, RDLC files... These are source-safed files. The might be checked in... marked as checked in... and still this happens to them. When you do a compare, you get the message 'Binary Files Differ'. If you view the most recent copy in Source Safe, you see a full file, but the copy that hasn't been changed since it was checked in has these characters.

WHAT GIVES?!?!?!?!?!

If it happens to .VB or .CS files, it gets caught during compile, but not the report files. THose could go out to a customer messed up and you don't know until you hit that report. (Or go out to QA.)