If you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7 with UAC enabled and Visual Studio set to Run as Administrator and you try to open a Solution File through Windows Explorer, Visual Studio will not open. If you check the “Choose default program” for SLN files you will see that is set to use Microsoft Visual Studio Version Selector, which is the source of the problem. What I think is happening is that the version selector recognizes the right program to open, but since it is not running in elevated trust (Run as Admin) it doesn’t have enough permissions to run another program (Visual Studio) as an Admin and Windows kills it.

The solution is to change the Microsoft Visual Studio Version Selector to run as an admin. To do so navigate to %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSEnv or %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSEnv (64-bit), right click on VSLauncher.exe and select Properties. Go to the Compatibility tab and check “Run this program as an Administrator”.

Thanks Gene Merlin for the tip!