I wish I knew what I did to cause this, but I cannot use the Visual Studio 2008 Designer at all with with MVVMLight templates. I receive a "Could not create an instance of type 'ViewModelLocator'. in any of my xaml pages. The application builds and runs fine but only the designer is broken. In the App.xaml is <Application x:Class="ExcelReportGenerator.App" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:vm="clr-namespace:ExcelReportGenerator.ViewModel" xmlns:res="clr-namespace:ExcelReportGenerator.Resources" Startup="Application_Startup" mc:Ignorable="d"> <Application.Resources> <!--Global View Model Locator--> <vm:ViewModelLocator x:Key="Locator" d:IsDataSource="True" /> </Application.Resources> I even receive the error when I create a brand new MVVMLight application. The interesting thing is if I use an express version of VS2010 I can view, edit and work in designer just fine. As much as I would love to go to VS2010, I can't right now convince IT to make that move.