I heard from a customer recently who ran into a package load failure error in Visual Studio 2005 that I hadn't seen before.  I want to post the description and workaround for this issue to make it easier for people searching for similar issues in the future.

In this particular scenario, the customer saw a package load failure error while trying to create a Windows Mobile 5 project in Visual Studio 2005.  The specific package that failed to load in this case was the Smart Device Project Package.

The customer found a workaround in this MSDN Forums post.  Here is the list of steps that will hopefully be useful in resolving this error:

1. For each user account on the computer, delete the folder named %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CoreCon\1.0 and all files under it
2. For each user account on the computer, rename the folder %userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Device Emulator\ to %userprofile%\Application
   Data\Microsoft\Device Emulator_B2\ (or some other backup folder name of your choice)
3. Repair the Windows Mobile 5.0 SDKs using the entries in the Add/Remove Programs control panel