More info

I noticed this bug might still cause big problems as well as just being an annoyance.

Sometimes when the message appear the filename will disappear from the editor tab (see image - the tab said "jpg.h" until a few seconds ago when I clicked an error message).

When file names disappeared in VS2015 it usually led to a problem where I couldn't close the IDE. It would say "Not enough memory to complete the operation" (or something like that) then refuse to close. Task manager was needed to kill it, with possible loss of work.

This has only happened once so far in VS2017 the still IDE closed OK but it still smells of a general memory corruption caused by this bug. Next time it might be more serious.

Ooops! I just got the full version of the bug a couple of minutes after the previous post.

The file name disappeared from the tab and Visual studio freaked out.

If I try to close the bad editor tab I get this:

If I try to close the IDE I get this:

Task manager was needed to kill / restart Visual Studio.

I had this bug many, many times yesterday. Had to kill/restart Visual Studio each time.

It's not random. Some files definitely seem to trigger it more than others.

It mostly happens when I go to an error after a failed compile (by clicking the error message).

C:\Users\Fungus\Work\moonsilver\air\air.h
c:\Users\Fungus\Work\moonsilver\air\air.h
C:\USERS\FUNGUS\WORK\MOONSILVER\AIR\AIR.H

I just noticed the file name variants in the initial post got HTMLised. Reformatted them... :-)

I'm sure this problem has something to do with the case of the filenames.

eg. I'm editing a file right now and I get the error every single time I click an error message.

If I right-click the editor tab and copy the path I get this:

C:\Users\Fungus\Work\topaz\topaz\stuff\viewer\plugin_common\plugin_constraints.cpp

If I right-click on an error message and copy it I see this path in the text:

c:\users\fungus\work\topaz\topaz\stuff\viewer\plugin_common\plugin_constraints.cpp

ie. it's been converted to lower case somewhere along the line.

If the lower case name is compared directly with the name in the editor then it won't match and will try to reopen the file. It needs a case insensitive compare.

Same here. When I try to double-click on the error (Output pane) IDE tells me TWICE that "This document is opened by another project". However in my case IDE activates proper pane with the file and position the cursor on line with an error. Anyway, these message boxes and beeps produced by them are very annoying.

@Conemu Maximus Yes, it goes to the correct file/line after you close the popups. That's not the issue.

Do you get the disappearing editor tab labels and IDE crashes as well?

Just an additional observation: I have the same problem, but not because of the filename case but because of \ vs / in the path. The solution explorer references a file as C:\devel\path\to\include\file.h while in the error window some of the path separators are different C:\devel\path\to\include/file.h

Thank you for your feedback! We have fixed the problem in an upcoming release (VS 2017 15.4 Preview 2). Thank you for helping us build a better Visual Studio!

I don't remember ever experiencing this before moving to 2017. It has become an almost-daily dance now.