I had recently encountered this error when trying to use Server Explorer in VS 2008 “Could not load file or assembly Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Sdk.Sfc, Version=10.0.0,0, Culture=neutral, ...or one of its dependencies The system cannot find the file specified.”
I knew that the cause was from playing around with the SQL Server 2008 bits, but I couldn’t quite place a finger on it. After some digging, I came to find that I needed some of the common files that had been removed, and I can get them in the SQL 2008 feature pack.
Not all the components in the feature pack are necessary, but the 3 essential ones are: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Native Client, Microsoft SQL Server System CLR Types and the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Management Objects. Once these are installed, the error was gone, and I can continue to use Server Explorer.
Note: The sync services are really cool, and worth downloading anyway :)
