Solution folders were added in Visual Studio 2005 to allow you to organize projects within a solution without changing the physical directory structure. I thought this was a great feature and it made the organization of our Visual Studio solutions intuitive and effective.
Like many others (here, here, here, here and here ... too many to list...) we have been suffering from Visual Studio crashes and the fragile loading of usercontrols and forms. I would on a regular day need to reload Visual Studio several times because of errors loading datasources or UI components.
After installing hotfixes and removing several projects from a large solution I decided to delete all the solution folders in an attempt to see if they are related to my VS crashes. In each solution folder I selected all the projects in that folder and dragged them to the solution node in the Solution explorer. After the projects were moved out of the solution folder I deleted it. I closed Visual Studio and rebooted my machine (an old habit). The end result is a slightly less organized solution treeview, but because of our naming conventions it isn't that bad.
Did it help? I was opening and closing several usercontrols in different assemblies, opening and closing the datasource window, opening and closing some more usercontrols and forms, but I couldn't make Visual Studio crash.
I was just sitting there for a few minutes thinking about how much time I've lost because of those VS crashes and restarts. Sure I'm happy I found a "workaround" that will make it possible to work for a two hour stretch without restarting everything, but I still have to wonder how this got through the cracks.