Could not load file or assembly sorttbls.nlp or one of its dependencies.

After some intermittend PC problems, BSOD and various annoyances that caused me to repair/optimize and replace certain pieces of my main development box over the past few weeks, I started getting this error message in Microsoft Visual Studio whenever I was trying to open/create or work with a project file... I could not start a new project nor load one up - making my development (local) environment almost completely useless. Here is the error message that I got and the steps that I took to resolve this error:

Could not load file or assembly 'sorttbls.nlp' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

This problem completely disabled Visual Studio, Microsoft Word, Excel and other Microsoft applications.

Step 1: Try add/remove programs to unload my .NET Framework packs. This was unsuccessful as the PC was throwing error message

Step 2: After some unsuccessful tries to reinstall .NET Framework packs, I ran across Aaron Stebner's Weblog: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2004/04/16/408856.aspx on this page I found The .NET Framework cleanup tool. You can download it here: http://astebner.sts.winisp.net/Tools/dotnetfx_cleanup_tool.zip

Step 3: Install the .NET Cleanup Tool and run it.

Step 4: Download a new Framework installation file: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856EACB-4362-4...

Step 5: Install and run the new 2.0 Framework

...

This solved my problems with my Microsoft applications - Word, Excel, Outlook and Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2008 appear to be working without issues now.

~Happy PC Fixing!