Just the other day I was attempting to relook at an old web project stuck in ASP.NET 1.1 and Visual Studio .NET 2003. Have retrieved the source files from my Subversion repository into a separate Windows XP machine, I hit an error attempting to open up the web project.
Unable to retrieve folder information from the server
I looked around the Internet and found no relevant resolution to my situation. I eventually did, but totally forgot to log down the reason. It was not until Plip hit the same problem did I make it a point to jot this down once and for all.
The problem is due to TortoiseSVN - the supreme Windows client for Subversion - defaulting to a convention of using ".svn" directories for version control tracking purposes on local directories. Visual Studio .NET 2003 is rather unhappy with the presence of such directories and throws the above tantrum error. In order to work around this, TortoiseSVN settings has an option to use the convention of "_svn" instead, which serves to keep Visual Studio .NET pacified and working properly.