I ran into a problem when trying to view the Server Explorer window in VS 2008 today. The window would not show up in the Visual Studio IDE no matter what I tried, even when I went to View > Server Explorer. Fortunately, there is an easy fix for this in most cases. All you have to do is open up the VS 2008 Command Prompt and type in devenv /setup. After that close and reopen Visual Studio and you should be able to view the Server Explore window. Warning: This command will reset your VS 2008 menus and toolbars so you could lose customizations you might have made to the IDE.