Visual Studio .NET 2005 Service Pack 1 started freezing on a solution it opened and compiled just recently. Deletion of *.ncb, *.aps, *.suo and intermediate/output files did not fix the problem, however what appeared to be a workaround was a rename of a subdirectory with a Cabinet (CAB) project .vdproj, which was one of the solution’s projects.
Installation of Visual Stuidio .NET 2008 might be the cause, but anyway I love this game <grrr>