I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why a solution went into an infinite loop?
Well can you see the difference between the 2 following files taken from the APP_Config/include folder?

The only difference is the comment!

I naturally assumed that the comment could not cause the problems with the site and investigated all sorts of things.
I was so WRONG, because when I removed the comment – the site no longer went into an infinite loop and all was good again.

I determined that if you have a comment as the first element after the configuration or the sitecore element in a include file the rest of the file is ignored 😦

I have reported this to Sitecore, and they have confirmed that it is a bug and will be fixed ASAP.

I wrote this post in case anybody else out there is currently bashing their head against a wall because their site does not work, due to an include file being ignored.