Visual Studio Error: "The reference to the object is not installed on the instance of the object" when clicking on a project and opening properties

Question

I have strange behavior in Visual Studio 2013 (and 2010) that I cannot fix.

I know that this is not directly related to programming (similar questions allow me to get the same error message through the code, so I assume that there is a problem with the code in Visual Studio).

My projects are C ++.

Whenever I click on a project and open its properties, I get the following window with an error:

with text:

The reference to the object is not installed in the instance of the object.

I can cause this error message by selecting “Configuration Properties → General”. Then, the view does not display information for General.

My setup is as follows: Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 64bit, Visual Studio 2010 (I need a compiler) and Visual Studio 2013 Professional (Update 4).

I need to work with these extensions:

• IBM Clearcase Integration
• IBM RTC VS Integration
• Visual assistant x
• Xoreax Incredibuild

What I tried without success:

• Delete all VS related files / folders in
  • %APPDATA%\..\Local\Microsoft
  • %APPDATA%\..\Roaming\Microsoft
  • %PROGRAMFILES%
  • %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%
  • %USERPROFILE%\Documents
• Repair / reinstall VS2010 and VS2013 (I always installed VS2010)
• Reinstall .NET Framework 4.5.2
• Create a new project from VS2013, I get the usual error plus:
• Use TotalUninstaller as described here to remove all extensions
• Including devenv with WinDBG in the process did not work (in non-invasive I could not get it to work)
• Run devenv.exe with safemode and log
• Remove NuGet as suggested here
• Create a new solution and delete the old .suo and .sdf files.
• Look at the exit ProcMon at startup error. I checked the registry for this key: nonexistent
• Look at the logfile in %APPDATA%\..\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\ActivityLog.xml generated with / log: the keys are in other keys with the value "(default)", I don’t know how to interpret this.
• Reset all user settings via (also secret) parameters named here
• Launch .NET Fixing Tools and SFC
• Clear (delete from) the registry
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\

So my questions

• How can I debug the problem?
• How can I really delete / reset all user settings and files and clear the registry.
• Could this be related to decisions or projects.
• Any third party components that are known to be problematic? .Net Frameworks?