I had to make a clean Vista install on my machine and all of a sudden I was getting System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException when opening old solutions. The error says very little to the user but what it really want’s to say is:
Install IIS 6 WMI Compatibility by going to Control Panel, Programs, Turn windows features on and off and select as the picture below shows
I had similar issue in Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2008.
Web applications were able to configure in ISS 7.5 but when i tried for the WebService it gave the com error. As you mentioned when i enabled items mentioned by you it worked.
Thanks
Thank you, thank you, thank you. You saved me hours of work.
Running Visual Studio Team System 2008 on Windows 7 64-bit. Got the exact same error message when loading a project. Adding IIS 6 WMI and Metabase corrected the issue immediately.
Glad I could help
I try to post stuff that are timekillers as soon as I run into them 
Thankyou very much Rizo. It worked for me too.
and I had to run vs2008 in admin mode.
I was looking eyverhwere and this popped up like nothing!