I have a very strange problem with my Visual Studio 2010 SP1 installation on a 64 bit system.
When I double click a xaml file in the solution explorer, nothing happens. The Designer doesn't show. However, when I CTRL + Tab, the file appears in the "Active Files" list.
Anyone has encountered this before? Is this a know bug? I couldn't find anything on the net...
I would check that the designer isnt simply being hidden away. Try (Menu) View > Designer or Shift+F7
Right click the xaml file, select Open With.... Which is the default editor? It should be Windows Presentation Foundation Designer.
Just to finish this question:
After some weeks it started working again. Never found out why or why it stopped working...
Related
When dragging a control from the toolbox and dropping it in the Windows Forms designer, a message box appears with the message Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
After closing the message box, I can drop the control on the form without any other issue.
This happens on a new project as well. The error appears in both VS 2015 and 2017 (both community editions).
EDIT : This happens on any control, including custom ones. This started happening after I updated to the latest version of Windows 10 (17134.48).
Instead of dragging and dropping, Clicking on the control, then clicking on the form is the workaround working for me until they come out with a newer update.
This is new behavior as of Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.8.6 for me.
Hopefully this will help others that just kept dragging and dropping over and over like I was doing :-)
Experiencing the same issue on Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2019 Version 16.5.0. I found that I was not able to drag and drop controls while VS was open on my high DPI external monitor, but if I moved VS to my native laptop monitor, I was able to drag and drop the controls.
For Visual Studio 2017 I did not fix the problem, but I found a workaround:
went to C:\Users\user.name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_e3603226
deleted all *.tbd, privateregistry.bin*, ApplicationPrivateSettings.xml files
deleted all files in ComponentModelCache folder
restarted Visual Studio as Administrator
it showed a message of updating the MEF files
drag and drop is NOT working. It keeps throwing the same error
BUT I can click on the item I want in the toolbox and then click on the designer without dragging and it works.
For Visual Studio 2015 I did not fix the problem, but I found a workaround:
went to C:\Users\user.name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0
deleted all *.tbd, *.lock, devenv.exe.config files
deleted all files in ComponentModelCache folder
restarted Visual Studio as Administrator
drag and drop is NOT working. It keeps throwing the same error
BUT I can click on the item I want in the toolbox and then click on the designer without dragging and it works.
I have also seen the same problem repeated today in Visual Studio 2019 (Today is June 27 2019). I am trying out the VS 2017 solution from CristisS (above). I have verified that the 'workaround' still throws the exception, however, you can immediately draw the tool onto the form.
I repeatedly run into the same issue. Seems to always be caused by running the Windows Forms designer on my secondary monitor. I don't know what causes it to misbehave, but moving Windows Forms Designer window back to my laptop screen always fixes the issue. Idk if it has something to do with scaling, or what, but it is a very repeatable issue that needs to be addressed.
Moving Visual Studio over from my hi res secondary monitor to my primary laptop monitor did fix the issue.
To use Visual Studio on my larger secondary monitor, I set my secondary monitor from 3840x2160 down to 2560x1440 and set scaling from 150% down to 100%
This lets me Drag and drop from the toolbox to the designer in Visual Studio 2019 (V16.11.3) without issue again.
I found two solutions, to this problem that they worked for my WPF project in VS2015
solution 1) Click on the icon "enable/disable project code" in the bottom of windows design(the last icon near the percentual of zoom)-->Put Disable.
solution 2) Dx mouse button on your file .xaml and apply your modify in blend , selecting the "Open in Blend..." menu.
That's all
Daniel.
Has anyone else experience incredibly slow performance in the XAML editor in VS 2010? If I have a new project with a limited number of files, the performance is fine. However, if I have a project with a larger number of XAML files, the XAML editor hangs intermittently every few seconds, making it almost impossible to use.
I should also note that the performance is only slow in one particular project where I am referencing DevExpress 2010. I am not certain if this is related.
Any suggestions on solutions to this problem would be greatly appreciated.
Chris
In Visual Studio 2012:
Go to
Tools > Options > TextEditor > XAML > Misc
Check Always open documents in XAML view and uncheck Automatically populate toolbox items.
In Visual Studio 2015, 2017:
Go to
Tools > Options > XAML Designer
uncheck Automatically populate toolbox items.
This fixed my same problem.
If you don't need the visual designer, you can select a different editor in visual studio:
Right click the xaml file -> Open With... -> Source Code (Text) Editor
You will only lose the split view, intellisense etc. should still work.
If you need to check something in the designer you can still click 'view designer' to open the normal XAML editor again.
If you want to improve the performance of the visual designer, try checking DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode in your code-behind. The visualiser instantiates your controls to know how to display them, thus executing parts of the code-behind.
Like the OP, I had extreme lag in the xaml editor on a project that relied heavily on DevExpress WPF controls. After trying unsuccessfully to resolve this issue with the other solutions posted here, I eventually tried deleting my Solution User Options (.suo) file, which is usually located in the same folder as the solution (.sln) file. This immediately resolved the issue. You may want to read this post about what visual studio stores in the suo file so you can reset anything important (such as build configuration - mine always defaults the active solution platform back to "Mixed Platforms" for example)
Short answer: if you do not use designer much, just replace the default editor for XAML, thus getting rid of XAML visual designer and speeding things up. Right click any XAML file, click Open with... and choose another default editor. Source code (text) editor works just fine.
Now it should be already fine. If you want to understand the details and completely get rid of the slow designer, read the long answer.
Long answer: Here is a nice explanation of what happens and why is it that slow.
A brief todo based on the aforementioned article in order to completely disable the visual designer of XAML:
Under Tools->Options->Text Editor->XAML->Miscellaneous->Default View check Always open documents in full XAML view
Open Task manager and end XAML Designer process XDesProc.exe (Note: for VS2013 right click this process and go to containing folder. Rename the exe to sth else, than end the process)
Standard XAML editor will load this process again (I guess it will not succeed with VS2013 and actions done in P.2). However, right click any XAML file, Open with... and choose another default editor. Source code (text) editor works just fine.
While using dev express, I've noticed some laggy response in the Visual Studio designer. This appears to be due to the license authentication of the DevExpress products.
If you delete the "Licenses.Licx" file (found in the project properties folder) you'll notice a marked improvement in performance.
Note: Removing the license file doesn't stop you from using DevExpress controls. But it does stop VS from constantly authenticating it.
I am using using VS2010 and if I have a form open in designer mode and run my application the designer tab will no longer show the form designer but instead an error will be displayed (and it is only fixed by restarting the IDE) saying:
"To prevent possible data loss before loading the designer, the
following errors must be resolved:"
1 Error:
"The designer could not be shown for this file because none of the
classes within it can be designed. The designer inspected the
following classes in the file: ##### --- The base class ##### could
not be loaded. Ensure the assembly has been referenced and that all
projects have been built"
I then shows the following call stack:
at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomDesignerLoader.EnsureDocument(IDesignerSerializationManager manager)
at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomDesignerLoader.PerformLoad(IDesignerSerializationManager manager)
at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.VSCodeDomDesignerLoader.PerformLoad(IDesignerSerializationManager serializationManager)
at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.BasicDesignerLoader.BeginLoad(IDesignerLoaderHost host)
Any help is greatly appreciated this is really annoying.
Thanks,
Joel.
I get this visual studio bug too now and then, and I deeply ignore the error text, instead I do the following:
Close the Design-tab
Reopens the Design mode by double click in Solution Explorer, or by right clicking Source code tab and select View Designer
Suddenly everything works again!
If not helping, you may have to change bullet 2 into:
Close and restart Visual Studio.
Maybe this can help you out.
I usually close the visual form, rebuild the solution, right-click then select "view designer" in the form code.
Very, very annoying. I am thinking of dropping back to VS2008.
Close the form. Clean the solution. Rebuild the solution. Reopen the form. Worked for me when nothing else would.
I had this same issue and I was able to resolve this by creating new project and then compiled and run the project and then I imported all the files and ran the project again and automatically it was working again did nothing extra.
I'm able to avoid restarting VS by doing the following
Add a new user control
Drag and drop some of your custom user controls on to it (If it gives you an error, build the solution again).
Reopen your control.
In my case, I have a winforms project with several custom controls that are used by other custom controls. Whenever I open some of those custom controls, I get a the "The base class ..." error. Adding a new custom control, building the project and then adding some custom controls from my project to the new custom control allowed me to open the custom controls that were giving me the "The base class ..." error.
UPDATE: I think I found the problem. My controls were not 'added' properly to the csproj file. In the csproj file, the files for partial classes of UI controls/components need the 'DependentUpon' attribute.
E.x.:
before:
<Compile Include="Windows\Forms\DataGridView.cs">
<SubType>Component</SubType>
</Compile>
<Compile Include="Windows\Forms\DataGridView.Designer.cs" />
after:
<Compile Include="Windows\Forms\DataGridView.cs">
<SubType>Component</SubType>
</Compile>
<Compile Include="Windows\Forms\DataGridView.Designer.cs">
<DependentUpon>DataGridView.cs</DependentUpon>
</Compile>
I had a situation where a custom user control appeared to be creating the error (not sure why) so I removed references to the user control from the form and the error went away.
It seems that after installing SP1 the problem has gone away.
Thanks for your help everyone.
I had the same problem using A control With Generics
MvpUserControl<Presenter,IViewMode> : UserControl
what I do it's Remove the Reference and Add again, Clean and Rebuild the Solution I Hope this can be useful for anybody else
I had the same problem with VS2010 SP1. Finally using Windows Update I saw some updates for Visual Studio and .Net, I installed them and is not happening any more.
Old post, but for those whom may find this...
Just ran in to this error and for me it was relatively simple fix.
Found that it may have something to do with the names of your classes, and renaming the problematic class to a higher order. That is the alphabetical order it appears in the assembly (Where A is higher than Z).
MSDN Article
Good luck.
This error occur if the Form class is not a first class in the file, for example if there is some helper class at the beginning of the file.
To solve this issue, move all other classes except Form class to the bottom of the file.
Don't code in Form1.Designer.cs. Move your logic to Form1.cs (hit F7 on Form1.cs [Design] tab).
"In the project file (.vcxproj), locate the entry for the target
Framework version. For example, if your project is designed to use the
.NET Framework 4.5, locate
v4.5 in the
element of the element. "
(Microsoft)
In my case the "v4.5" didn't exist so I add it, and everything is good now.
I tried clean solution and re-build solution and worked for me.
Hope this help!
This solution works fine, please follow these steps below to solve your problem:
Check the reference if load correctly
Clean the solution and rebuild again
Clean the project and rebuild again
Clean your project and open it again
I was login as administrator in visual studio . I just close my visual studio and again open it without run as administrator and my problem is solved
I ran into this today after upgrading VS2019. I went to properties, configuration tab, and set the projects to Configuration = Debug, Platform = Any CPU. Then it worked.
I faced this issue.
To prevent possible data loss before loading the designer, the following errors must be resolved:
I found solution for this problem:
Close all open tabs, and refresh (sync active documents) the solution.
For more information, you can see this video : https://youtu.be/Q3x2HBd7BDs
I am using:
Visual Studio 2010 Professional,
Silverlight 4 Toolkit
The WPF Designer don't show (invisible) - while the Component Toolbox is showing the relevant controls, and the Windows->Windows option shows the designer to be active. It does this with ALL XAML for me, regardless of its complexity. I have already tried the /ResetSkipPkgs to no avail. I had CodeRush and DevExpress installed (demo) version but removed both since. I can get along with XAML by switching to Source Code /Text Editor, but this really boils my chops to run the app to find out that I have made a silly mistake in my XAML (while a preview would sort it out quicker, and no, please don't suggest Expression Blend for it is non-nonsensical for me to switch continuously between these applications).
When I however switch the WPF Designer to open with Encoding I get the following error - which I assume is related to the issue for not showing the XAML Editor/Designer in non-encoding:
An Unhandled Exception has occurred
Click to reload the designer
System.NullReferenceException
Object Reference not set to an instance of an object.
at MS.Internal.Providers.VSDesignerContext.VSDesignerContextHolder..ctor(IServiceProvider services, VSDesignerContext context, Object docData)
at MS.Internal.Providers.VSDesignerContext.GetContext(IServiceProvider services, IVsWindowFrame frame, Boolean createIfNotExist)
at MS.Internal.Designer.TabbedEditorPane.MS.Internal.Designer.ITabbedEditorService.get_DesignerContext()
at MS.Internal.Designer.DesignerPane.InitializeDesigner()
I have googled it silly, to no avail. I am thinking about reinstalling Visual Studio - but this REALLY is a last resort. I hate fixing things by reinstalling, rebooting etc.
Any guru with the magical answer?
I got the exact same exception today and solved it by killing a few GDI hungry apps. You can see the number of GDI objects a process is using in the Processes tab of Task manager (you will probably need to add the column using View -> Select Columns).
Hmm, I know this is old, but you should try installing SP1 for your Visual Studio if you haven't yet.
I'm working on a solution that contains multiple projects targeting Windows Mobile 5 and standard Windows applications.
Lately when opening up a form in designer the common UI controls (textbox, button, label, etc etc...) have vanished leaving only the controls defined within the project.
Resetting the toolbox has no effect. A google search suggested deleting the toolbox temp files in the Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0, however this was only successful in bringing back the default controls for Windows Mobile 5. The WinForms controls are still mysteriously missing.
Also, if I right-click and Select All on the toolbox, all of the WinForms controls do in fact come up, however they're all grayed out.
Has anyone else experienced this?
I just had a similiar problem. In a managed C++ project all the default toolbox items disappeared form the winforms designer. After playing around for a while I found that there was a problem in the .vcproj file.
<VisualStudioProject
ProjectType="Visual C++"
Version="9,00"
Name="COLLADA Import"
ProjectGUID="{0DEEF9B6-1929-44E3-92EC-13712839FB63}"
RootNamespace="COLLADAImport"
Keyword="ManagedCProj"
TargetFrameworkVersion="0"
>
When you set TargetFrameworkVersion to a valid number, for example 131072 for .Net 2.0, the toolbox items will be back.
If you right click on the Toolbox and select 'Choose Items...' and then sort by the 'Namespace' column, you can then select the ones you need (for example System.Windows.Forms for WinForms).
You can multiselect with Shift and then select/deselect the group.
The controls then reappear in the Toolbox as enabled.
I've noticed this exact same thing for regular WinForms as well. I can't speak to mobile applications but in regular winforms this has a tendency to happen.
I believe it's actually a bug in Visual Studio.
There are some things you can do (again, for WinForms. I'm not sure about mobile) with adding attributes to your control. Such as:
[ToolboxBitmap(typeof(MyControl), "MyControlBitmap")]
There are some other useful related things on this site:
http://en.csharp-online.net/Design-Time_Integration-Attributes
I had exactly the same problem (after installing Windows Mobile SDK all items in the toolbox were greyed out).
I've startet the Visual Studio 2008 command line as administrator and started the following command (WARNING - all your settings are lost !!)
devenv /setup /resetuserdata /selfreg /resetskippkgs
After that the toolbox looked fine and worked like on the first day.
The idea came from this thread: connect.microsoft.com
Go to the Tools menu and choose import & export settings, then choose the 'reset all' setting, then yes. Save your current settings, after that you'll have your toolbox reappear.
Actually you may be able to add a registry key to get this to work also.
Make sure you're not in Debug mode.
If you are running Visual Studio 2008 under vista, try running it as an Administrator. Right click on the shortcut and select Run as Administrator.
Well guess what install Service pack 1 for VS 2008 and it would go away and if you have wireless mouse and keyboard turn it off. Choose one of these two both work.