Visual Studio 2010 error: “Project Target Framework Not Installed” when opening a .NET 4.0 project

Question

I am experiencing a rather disconcerting issue with one of my development machines that I hope someone can advise me on.

I have a large Visual Studio 2010 VB solutio

Answer 1

OK for me what worked historically was to manually remove newer versions of .net, then install visual studio.

In windows 10 by default has a version of .net installed that is built in (I think) so cannot be uninstalled (4.5? 4.7?), at least I think that's what's going on, I certainly cannot remove it via "uninstall" I click that and it just stays in the list (4.5 that is). So my old answer, above, no longer works.

Also another clue, when you install the 7.1 Windows SDK it says "RTM .NET version 4...these components will not be installed".

Fix was to uninstall the Windows SDK, then temporarily spoof that version 4.7 was not installed. Then install the SDK. Now VS 2010 express loads my C++ projects again (I presume what it did was install .net 4.0 successfully). Either the offline ISO or web version seem to work with this.