There’s a small problem in the Visual Studio IDE that isn’t really a blocker but can be really annoying: If you set your “Error List” or “Output” panels to auto-hide (that’s the mode in which they slide into the borders of the main window so you can only see their captions), sometimes, these windows will get stuck.
What typically happens in my case is that I double click on an error in the “Error List” panels, the source code editor opens the file in question, but the “Error List” panels stays open, with my cursor hidden behind the “Error List” window so I cannot see the code I’m supposed to fix. Even if I move the mouse to the other side of the screen and keep hammering the Escape key, the darn thing stays open 
If I then just close the entire panel, the next time it pops up, it will have auto-hide disabled and waste precious space in your IDE window. As I said, nothing terrible, but it’s regularly nagging me.
Now I’ve found the solution: Use the keyboard shortcut that opens the panel and it will, after the usual time it’s supposed to stay open, slide away again. For the “Error List” window, that shortcut happens to be Ctrl+W,E and for the “Output” window, it’s Ctrl+Alt+O (at least if you chose the Visual C# Developer profile for your IDE).
As far as I know, this little bug has persisted from Visual Studio 2005 (maybe even earlier, I don’t remember) up to Visual Studio 2008 and seemingly affects all editions, including the Express SKUs.
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I’m glad I’ve found somebody documenting this nagging behavior…
Alternate solution, which actually is somewhat the same: Ctrl-Tab your way to the stuck pane.
It seems that what is needed is to put the focus back to the “faulty” pane using the keyboard.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
This drives me crazy!! I always end up clicking the pin to “de-auto-hide” and then clicking it again to “re-auto-hide” and then it goes away. How does Microsoft not know how annoying this is??