I was asking myself the same question.
Problem: Visual Studio 2008 SP1 General toolbox tab disappears and is replaced by a tab called #13119. It also disables most of your tool box in WPF.
I think it was caused by some Pocket PC emulation work. I think I lost them around the same time.
Fix attempts.
I tried to do all of the standard /reset command line switches. New projects. Rebuilding projects. Moving projects to new Solutions, nothing was working.
I stumbled across an old MSDN post about VS 2005 doing the same thing.
The post reccomends removing 4 files from a Visual Studio Directory. Unfortunatly, the post is old so you'll need to take a diffrent path with Visual Studio 2008 and Vista.
1. Make sure you can see all of the folders on your box. We are heading to the realm of hidden files: (Under Tools --> Folder Options)
2. Close Visual Studio if it is open.
3. Go Here: C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\
4. Backup the following files in a temp folder for saftey and delete the originals.
- toolboxIndex_reset.tbd
- toolboxIndex.tbd
- toolbox_reset.tbd
- toolbox.tbd
5. Restart Visual Studio and the files will be recreated. It'll take a few seconds for the toolbox to repopulate.
...and that should do it for you...
All the usual disclaimers... Worked on my box... Perform at yur own risk!!!