In Visual Studio 2008, I have a solution with a number of projects. Each project has the same build output path of "..\bin\Debug\" for debug, and "..\bin\Release\" for release.

So the directory structure looks like this:

solution\
    bin\
    project1\
    project2\
    project3\

This all works fine, all the assemblies go to the correct location when I build the project, etc.

Howevever, when I first open the solution in Visual Studio, an empty bin folder is created one level up from where it should.

So I am getting:

bin\
solution\
    bin\
    project1\
    project2\
    project3\

This folder is only created when I first open the solution. Never when I build.

I have looked through the .sln and every .csproj file, and I cannot work out why this folder is being created.

So, my questions are: a) Why is this bin folder being created? b) How do I stop Visual Studio from creating this bin folder?