My team have our work files on a network drive. A while back, the old file server was replaced by a NetApp solution, and since then, we randomly (usually a couple of times a day) get the “File Modification Detected” warning dialog in Visual Studio, even though the file has not been touched.

More specifically, Visual Studio detects modifications to the solution (.sln) and project (.csproj) files, so what you get is “The solution/project ‘XXX’ has been modified outside the environment”, and a bunch of options for how to handle it.

I understand what this message means, but as far as i can tell, there has been no modification to the file in question – at all. The modification timestamp is typically much older, and fits when I know that the file was last modified (for real), and the file contents are binary identical with the previous version.

The same problem occurs in the older work directories that were copied to the NetApp when the old file server was retired, and in new work directories cloned from the central git repository.

When I go back to one of the older file servers (which by the way is not a permanent solution), the problem disappears, so it seems related to the NetApp, but I do not know that for sure.

Any ideas to what could be causing this problem?