Unable to access documentation in visual studio 2008

The documentation system in my VS2008 installation seems to have become corrupted. Neither the Help-Contents window not the Help-Index window display anything apart from the Filter popdown (which seems to be empty) - and if I try to use this popdown I get a the error message

"The selected filter开发者_开发技巧 contains an error that prevents it from being applied"

There must be some corrupted index somewhere - any suggestions for a resolution?

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There's a Microsoft Connect issue describing a similar problem with VS2005 and is related to the user having previous beta/CTP versions installed. In the 2nd post of the thread he mentions registry entries that he deleted to get it to work: MSDN/Help corrupt or missing.

I had a look in the registry under current_user\software\microsoft\msdn and there was stuff there for 7.0 & QTR. I deleted these then selected Product Documentation from the VS05 start menu and it's now all working.

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I found this solution for the error message you describe on microsoft.public.vsnet.documentation:

...My error was caused by corrupt help file nslist.hxl in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft Help. I guess it was my hard disk problem. My fix was to overwrite nslist.hxl by a good copy from another machine.

EDIT

You can try a Repair installation on Visual Studio.