Error '.', hexadecimal value 0x00, is an invalid character. Line 1, position 1

Encountered this error with Visual Studio? I’ll show you what I’ve done to fix it.

‘.’, hexadecimal value 0x00, is an invalid character. Line 1, position 1

If you are getting this message, then I feel for you. It’s happened to me twice and it’s intensely frustrating. You may see this error as well as a whole bunch of other, nonsensical errors.

The problem is Visual Studio has corrupted an XML or XAML file. You need to hunt down the particular file and either revert back to a preview copy or delete it. Visual Studio will be of no help in narrowing down the source.

Below is a picture of a XAML page that became corrupt. In Visual Studio is looked empty but this is what it looked like in Notepad++. Whole lotta nulls.

NULL contennt