Does your Visual Studio 2008 crash occasionally? I mean it works correctly most of the time, but suddenly it vanishes and you have to restart it. That happened to me and it drove me nuts, so I started looking for a solution. Honestly, I was suspecting CodeRush and Refactor! Pro for being the cause of my crashes, but at the bottom of my heart I knew they were guiltless :-)
I noticed the following error entry in the Event Log that later helped me find the solution:
.NET Runtime version 2.0.50727.3082 - Fatal Execution Engine Error (7A035FC0) (80131506)
It looks like the problem appears on systems with ASP.NET MVC installed (that was my case). And there is a patch available:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=16827
I installed it and it has fixed my problem. Before you go ahead downloading and installing the patch, make sure that the problem reveals these symptoms on your system:
1. ASP.NET MVC is installed.
2. .NET Runtime - Fatal Execution Engine Error is in the Event Log.
It took me awhile to figure out which hot-fix I needed to download. NDP20SP2 stands for Windows XP, and Windows6.0 stands for Windows Vista. A patch for Windows 7 is not yet available, AFAIK. There is an issue report on MS Connect that looks very similar, though it's closed as Not Reproducible:
VS.Net 2008 closes when I try to use the Toolbox
Here are more links on the topic:
Visual Studio closes all the time
Hotfix Available for ASP.NET MVC Crashes
I hope this helps.