I was getting the message "This project is incompatible with the current version of Visual Studio" from Visual Studio 2010. One situation resulting in this error has already been posted here. I'm thinking it's a fairly generic problem, and since I have found a "solution", I'll post this question, and also my solution as an answer, in the hopes it is of help to others.
The Solution as folllows:
If the message "This project is incompatible with the current version of Visual Studio" is due to an attempt to open a project targeting .Net 4.5, then the "solution" or workaround is to edit the .csproj file and change the TargetFrameworkVersion from "v4.5" to "v4.0". That at least allows the project to be loaded, although it may result in compiler errors if the program is dependent on 4.5 features.