The Moth

If in Visual Studio 2005 you try to open a project created with Visual Studio .NET 2003, the conversion wizard appears. Apart from the option to backup the existing solution, there isn't much more to it other than clicking the "Finish" button. It basically takes the project file (which is v7.1 or v7.0) and converts it to VS2005 (v8.0); all code files (.vb or .cs) remain untouched.

When you install VS2005 you can quickly tell in your file explorer which solutions were created with which version of Visual Studio, check out this screenshot.

Note that if you double click on a 7.x *project* file in explorer, you will be presented with the upgrade wizard in VS2005, whereas doing the same for a 7.x *solution* file, correctly opens it in VS.NET 2003.

So I was upgrading some VB device projects with Beta 2 and noted a few subtle differences between the *upgraded* VS2005 projects and *new from scratch* VS2005 projects of the same type. The differences are easier observed by opening the project files in notepad (or an XML editor) and comparing them (you know of course about MSBuild).

For example, the upgraded project has a bunch of empty tags (which are not needed): ApplicationIcon, AssemblyKeyContainerName, AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile, AssemblyOriginatorKeyMode, StartupObject and PreBuildEvent/PostBuildEvent under PropertyGroup under FileUpgradeFlags. It also has a bunch of tags with default values (whereas new projects omit them) or tags that don't apply to NETCF projects: DelaySign, OptionCompare, OptionExplicit, OptionStrict, RegisterForComInterop, RemoveIntegerChecks, TreatWarningsAsErrors, WarningLevel and Name/Private under Reference Include under ItemGroup.

Newly created projects will have the new properties structure I described previously here. You can observe this in the new files in the text editor with tags such as: AutoGen/DesignTimeDependentUpon under Compile Include for Resources.Designer file. Also for tags such as: Generator/LastGenOutput/CustomToolNamespace under EmbeddedResource Include for Resources.resx file.

Sooo...

If you still wish to go down the upgrade wizard path for your VB device projects, here are my recommendations for your project properties window:
1. Select Option Strict On
2. Select “Error” as the Notification for all Conditions except "Use of variable prior to assignment"
3. Check "Treat all warnings as errors"
4. Check "Generate XML documentation file"
5. Go to "Advanced Compile Options". On the "Generate debug info" combo, select "Full" (at least for a debug configuration) DebugType
6. Go to references and remove unused ones (Unused References->Remove)
7. Uncheck assembly COM-Visible [unless you explicitly want it to be visible]
8. If you want AssemblyInfo in its own folder, create one in the project and move it there.

Alternatively, if you want clean projects following the new style:
a) Create a brand new project in VS2005 (of the same type as the one you will upgrade)
b) Delete the default code file (e.g. Form1 or Class1 etc)
c) Copy attributes from the old AssemblyInfo file to the new one as appropriate
d) Copy settings from the old project properties to the new one as appropriate
e) Add references to the new project to match the old ones
f) Deal with resx files as discussed here

Finally, and continuing from my last point above, it makes sense that you upgrade your projects (one way or the other) bottom up. In other words, start with your class library that references nothing but framework assemblies and work the projects up to your Application (the exe). Note that VS2005 will allow you to reference assemblies built against v1 of the framework! So be sure you are referencing *upgraded* dlls and not the original/old ones.