I discovered today that the project properties for VB ASP.NET projects in Visual Studio 2005 are pretty lacking - including no option to enable/disable Option Strict. A workaround is posted here (Broken link, was originally lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/viewfeedback.aspx?feedbackid=3c1c9898-8076-4f69-a5e2-e99573d03c6e).