I am working on an ASP.NET MVC project and so far I had no problems with scaffolding any type of items until now.
Every time I want to create a new controller or view, I get the following error message:
There was an error running the selected code generator: 'The value -1 is outside the acceptable range of [0,2147483647]. Parameter name :value'
This issue only arises in the project that I'm currently working on as I tried creating a new controller in another project and it worked flawlessly.
I already tried the solution to delete the ComponentModelCache folder and rebuilding the project but the problem still persists.
My Visual Studio 2019 is also up to date.
EDIT:
Pulling the project from git source control on another PC and restoring the packages fixed the issue for me. You probably don't have to do it from another computer, just try deleting the project and restoring it from remote.
EDIT 2:
Creating a second view and the same problem is back again...
I fixed this by unloading and reloading the project
You just need to - delete ".vs" folder from your solution directory.
In summary only the deleting of the .vs folder is what has worked for me.
On reopening VS2019 16.2.3 - I can now add in Controllers and Views without seeing this error.
Found it from Microsoft Developer Community site: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/626755/error-running-the-selected-code-generator-value-1.html?childToView=684261#comment-684261
code-generator-solution
This issue has been resolved in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2.4. The release notes are available here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2019/release-notes#16.2.4
One of the possibility is if your web.config file is open then this error might appear. Try closing the web.config file and then add a View.
You can also reach out to this website for more reference: Error Running the Selected Code Generate Value
Hope this helps.
I was able to fix this by replacing the web project with a new one.
-I renamed the project like project_old folder and removed it from solution.
-Added a new project to the solution by right click and add project
-Created the old controllers and everything with copying from old project files
-Updated nuget packages and deleted old project files
Clean Solution -> Rebuild Solution and voilla
i fix it, deleting the .vs folder, re opening the project, and clenning the solution
Close all documents, and try again to create new controller.
It works for me in Visual Studio 2019 asp.net MVC but I don't know why
I was able to fix this by manually deleting the BIN and OBJ folders for my projects. Running Clean in Visual Studio did not work.
I was getting this error - as my project is a git repository, I ran git clean -xfd on it, then rebuilt it and was able to add a controller when I tried again.
try both any one will work either of them.
1.Just delete .vs folder in project solution.
2.If above fix does not work.,close your web.config file if it is opened.
I tried it all and finally found a solution that worked, this issue only happens when the web.config file is open in the editor. Hope this help.
Credits :
Vijay Ramakrishnan [MSFT]
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/626755/error-running-the-selected-code-generator-value-1.html
I fixed this by matching the version of "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.CodeGeneration.Design" Version="5.0.2" to the rest.
Replaced everything that was 5.0.9 with 5.0.2 and it worked.
Go Back to VS 2017 and it will work just fine
just use vs15. In many regards vs19 is still beta...
After reading every article here and trying every suggested action I'm out of things to try:
I have a namespace issue in Visual Studio 2015 - in a XAML file in UWP.
The concrete error message is:
"The name "FieldManagementViewModel" does not exist in the namespace
"using:StudyConfigurationClient.ViewModels"".
This is my XAML:
This is the structure to show, that the folder and file actually exists, folder structure equals namespaces in this project:
I've looked all references and namespaces through, I've repaired Visual Studio 2015, I've cleaned and rebuilt several times and changed platform for the build back and forth - I'm out of options.
What worked for me:
Remove the problematic XAML tag, so that solution will build
Rebuild project
Restore the tag
I think VS falls into a chicken & egg situation here, in that it needs newly added classes built so that XAML can see them, but it can't build them because XAML can't see them.
Just add this solution to this probelm:
- Close and re-open Visual Studio
In my case the problem occurred in App.xaml. In the properties for App.xaml the BuildAction had somehow been changed to Page. After restoring the BuildAction to ApplicationDefinition the problem went away. (See also this related answer.)
Thanks for helping - this issue magically went away when I pulled a change from git, which shouldn't affect this in any way. Sorry for not being able to help others, but I haven't got a clue about what happened.
While working on my MonoDroid/Xamarin.Android app, it suddenly stopped building, telling me
"java" exited with code 1.
After turning on normal MSBuild output verbosity, it showed that the error occurred in Xamarin.Android.Common.targets, located in C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Xamarin\Android. The line (line 988) starts this block of xml:
<CompileToDalvik
JavaMaximumHeapSize="$(JavaMaximumHeapSize)"
JavaOptions="$(JavaOptions)"
AndroidSdkDirectory="$(_AndroidSdkDirectory)"
ClassesOutputDirectory="$(IntermediateOutputPath)android\bin\classes"
JavaSdkDirectory="$(_JavaSdkDirectory)"
MonoPlatformJarPath="$(MonoPlatformJarPath)"
JavaSourceFiles="#(AndroidJavaSource)"
JavaLibraries="#(AndroidJavaLibrary)"
LibraryProjectJars="$(IntermediateOutputPath)__library_projects__\*.jar"
UseDx="$(UseDx)"
/>
Also, when I have the above file open, I have 53 warnings, all similar to:
The element 'PropertyGroup' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003' has invalid child element 'ResolveReferencesDependsOn' in namespace
'http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003'. List of possible elements expected: 'Property, AllowUnsafeBlocks, ... [followed by a long list of elements]
I deleted all the code that I had recently added, then ended up doing a full revert to previous code that worked, but the error continues no matter what I do. I found a resolved bug that may occur on the same line, but the solution given there didn't work for me. Also, because of the warnings and the fact that my code used to work it its current revision, it doesn't seem to be the same problem. Any ideas why this would happen, and how I might fix it?
More details: I tried running a new M4A project and it worked fine, so it looks like it isn't a problem with the M4A file, but something my code.
Even more details: I was going through each class, commenting them out to see if I could find a particular block that was causing the problem, when the error suddenly changed. It now displays an error identical to the one found in this question. I am also using the 30-day trial. However, I am using Visual Studio. I'll be seeing if the answer and comments there will help me too.
I had the same problem and solved it by deleting my entire solution an pulling it from source control again. If you do not have a source to pull from, then i suggest deleting all generated files such as the contents of bin and debug folders.
Yes It's a good solution I have removed same problem from my project.
Step that you have need
1. Delete Bin and obj folder from project
2. Delete Solution File From Project Folder
3. Open New Visual Studio and then Click File > Open > Project/Solution >
Select Folder Where placed you project.
and after all, Rebuild Solution file and then rebuild your project.
I am sure u will success about this problem.....
I encountered this problem on a colleague's computer. The problem ended up being that his old sdk was installed under Program Files, while the update installed it under AppData. Changing this folder under Options > Xamarin > Android in Visual Studio solved the problem for him.
I have solved by disabling the Proguard option and able to build it.
Right Click on Project -> Click Properties -> Android Options -> Uncheck Checkbox of Enable Proguard.
I am working on a WPF, C# 3.0 project, and I get this error:
Error 1 Metadata file
'WORK=- \Tools\VersionManagementSystem\BusinessLogicLayer\bin\Debug
\BusinessLogicLayer.dll' could not be found C:\-=WORK=- \Tools
\VersionManagementSystem\VersionManagementSystem\CSC VersionManagementSystem
This is how I reference my usercontrols:
xmlns:vms="clr-namespace:VersionManagementSystem"
<vms:SignOffProjectListing Margin="5"/>
It happens after every failed build. The only way I can get the solution to compile is to comment out all my user controls and re-build the project, and then I uncomment the usercontrols and everything is fine.
I have checked build orders and dependencies configurations.
As you can see, it seems to have truncated the DLL file's absolute path... I have read that there is a bug with the length. Is this a possible problem?
It's very annoying and having to comment, build, and uncomment, the build is becoming extremely tiresome.
I just had the same problem. Visual Studio isn't building the project that's being referenced.
Written Instructions:
Right click on the solution and click Properties.
Click Configuration on the left.
Make sure the check box under "Build" for the project it can't find is checked. If it is already checked, uncheck, hit apply and check the boxes again.
(Optional) You had to do it for both Release and Debug modes on the solution properties.
Screen capture Instructions:
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Click on the GIF to zoom in, and hopefully it will be easy to follow:
This can still happen in newer versions of Visual Studio (I just had it happen on Visual Studio 2013):
Another thing to try is to close Visual Studio and delete the .suo file that is next to the .sln file. (It will be re-generated the next time you Save all (or exit Visual Studio)).
I've had this problem when adding new projects to the solution on another machine and then pulling the revisions in, but the .suo file can be corrupted in other cases as well and lead to very strange Visual Studio behaviour, so deleting it is one of the things I always try.
Note that deleting the .suo file will reset the startup project(s) of the solution.
More on the .suo file is here.
The suggested answer did not work for me. The error is a decoy for another problem.
I found out that I was targeting a slightly different version of .NET and this was flagged as a warning by the compiler, but it was causing building to fail.
This should have been flagged as an error and not a warning.
Well, my answer is not just the summary of all the solutions, but it offers more than that.
Section (1):
In general solutions:
I had four errors of this kind (‘metadata file could not be found’) along with one error saying 'Source File Could Not Be Opened (‘Unspecified error ‘)'.
I tried to get rid of ‘metadata file could not be found’ error. For that, I read many posts, blogs, etc. and found these solutions may be effective (summarizing them over here):
Restart Visual Studio and try building again.
Go to 'Solution Explorer'. Right click on Solution. Go to Properties. Go to 'Configuration Manager'. Check if the checkboxes under 'Build' are checked or not. If any or all of them are unchecked, then check them and try building again.
If the above solution(s) do not work, then follow sequence mentioned in step 2 above, and even if all the checkboxes are checked, uncheck them, check again and try to build again.
Build Order and Project Dependencies:
Go to 'Solution Explorer'. Right click on Solution. Go to 'Project Dependencies...'. You will see two tabs: 'Dependencies' and 'Build Order'. This build order is the one in which solution builds. Check the project dependencies and the build order to verify if some project (say 'project1') which is dependent on other (say 'project2') is trying to build before that one (project2). This might be the cause for the error.
Check the path of the missing .dll:
Check the path of the missing .dll. If the path contains space or any other invalid path character, remove it and try building again.
If this is the cause, then adjust the build order.
Section (2):
My particular case:
I tried all the steps above with various permutations and combinations with restarting Visual Studio a few times. But, it did not help me.
So, I decided to get rid of other error I was coming across ('Source File Could Not Be Opened (‘Unspecified error ‘)').
I came across a blog post: TFS Error–Source File Could Not Be Opened (‘Unspecified error ‘)
I tried the steps mentioned in that blog post, and I got rid of the error 'Source File Could Not Be Opened (‘Unspecified error ‘)' and surprisingly I got rid of other errors (‘metadata file could not be found’) as well.
Section (3):
Moral of the story:
Try all solutions as mentioned in section (1) above (and any other solutions) for getting rid of the error. If nothing works out, as per the blog mentioned in section (2) above, delete the entries of all source files which are no longer present in the source control and the file system from your .csproj file.
In my case it was caused by a .NET Framework version mismatch.
One project was 3.5 and the other referencing project 4.6.1.
Visual Studio 2019 this worked for me:
Close Visual Studio
Delete the hidden .vs folder
Reopen Visual Studio and rebuild the solution.
Closing and reopening Visual Studio 2013 worked for me!
Well, nothing in the previous answers worked for me, so it got me thinking about why am I clicking and hoping when as developers we should really try to understand what is going on here.
It seemed obvious to me that this incorrect meta data file reference must be held somewhere.
A quick search of the .csproj file showed the guilty lines. I had a section called <itemGroup> that seemed to be hanging onto the old incorrect filepath.
<ItemGroup>
<ProjectReference Include="..\..\..\MySiteOld\MySite.Entities\MySite.Entities.csproj">
<Project>{5b0a347e-cd9a-4746-a3b6-99d6d010a6c2}</Project>
<Name>Beeyp.Entities</Name>
</ProjectReference>
...
So a simple fix really:
Backup your .csproj file.
Find the incorrect paths in the .csproj file and rename appropriately.
Please make sure you backup your old .csproj before you fiddle.
In my case, I have my installed directory in mistaken ways.
If your solution path is something like "My Project%2c Very Popular%2c Unit Testing%2c Software and Hardware.zip", it cannot resolve the metadata file, perhaps we should prevent some invalid words like %2c.
When a repository is cloned from certain sites, the directory name is URL encoded. Which would convert space characters in directory names to %20, forward slashes to %2f, underscores to %5f, etc. Although, I'm not sure why the % symbol is breaking things.
Renaming the path into a normal name resolved my issue.
I also met this problem. Firstly you have to manually build you DLL project, by right-click, Build. Then it will work.
In my case, the problem was caused by a simple build error,
error CS0067: The event 'XYZ' is never used
that, for any reason, did not show up in the error window.
Because of that, the Visual Studio build system seemed to miss the error and tried to build dependent projects, which in turn failed with the annoying metadata message.
The recommendation is -as stupid as it may sound-:
First look at your Output Window!
It took me half an hour before this idea hit me...
I got the same error "Metadata file '.dll' could not be found", and I tried several things described above, but the reason for the error was that I was referencing third-party DLL file which was targeting a .NET version higher that my project target .NET version. So the solution was to change the target framework of my project.
I added a new project to my solution and started getting this.
The reason? The project I brought in was targeting a different .NET framework (4.6 and my other two were 4.5.2).
For me, it was trying to find a DLL in a path that used to contain the Project, but we'd moved it to a new directory. The Solution had the correct path to the Project, but Visual Studio somehow kept looking in the old location.
Solution: Rename each problem Project - just add a character or whatever - then rename it back to its original name.
This must reset some global cache of some kind in Visual Studio, because this clears both this issue up and several like it, while things like Clean do not.
It looks like such kind of errors related to the fact that Visual Studio doesn't provide correct information about an error. The developer doesn't even understand the reason for the failed build. It can be a syntax error or something else. In common, to solve such problems you should find the root of the problem (for example, look at the build log).
In my case the problem was in fact that the Error List window didn't show any errors. But really there were syntax errors; I found these errors in the Output window, and after fixing them, the problem was solved.
For me it occurred when I included a new project to a solution.
Visual Studio automatically selects .NET framework 4.5.
I changed to version .NET 4.5.2 like the other libraries, and it worked.
If you have a space in your solution name, this will also cause the issue. Removing the space from your solution name, so path doesn't contain %20 will solve this.
Coming back to this a few years later, this problem is more than likely related to the Windows maximum path limit:
Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces, Maximum Path Length Limitation
For me the following steps worked:
Find the project that is not building
Remove/add references to projects within the solution.
I was pulling my hair out with this problem also, but after trying the previous answers the only thing that worked for me was to open each project in my solution 1 by 1 and build them individually.
Then I closed Visual Studio 2013, reopened my solution and it compiled fine.
It's strange, because if I clicked each project in my Solution Explorer and tried to build them that way, they all failed. I had to open them alone in their own solutions.
In my case the issue was that I'd manually deleted a non-compilation file which was marked as "missing". Once I deleted the reference to the now-missing file and recompiled - all was well.
My instance of the problem was caused by a common project that had a duplicate class name in it (under a different filename). It is strange that Visual Studio could not detect that and instead just blew up the build process.
I got this problem in Visual Studio 2012 in a solution that had many projects. Rebuilding each project in the solution manually in the same order as the Project Build Order (right-click and rebuild in Solution Explorer) fixed it for me.
Eventually I got to one that gave me a compile error. I fixed the error, and the solution would build correctly after that.
I too had the same error. It hides as in the below path.
The path which I referred to for the DLL file is like "D:\Assemblies Folder\Assembly1.dll".
But the original path in which the assembly referred was "D:\Assemblies%20Folder\Assembly1.dll".
Due to this path name variation, the assembly could not be retrieved from its original path and hence throws the "Metadata not found" error.
The solution is in Stack Overflow question How do I replace all the spaces with %20 in C#?.
Most of the methods explained here did not solved the problem for me.
Finally, I fixed the problem by applying the following steps:
1. Close Visual Studio.
2. Delete all the contents in the bin folders of each project.
3. Open solution and rebuild.
I hit and solved this problem today on VS2022 in a solution with a Blazor project.
The underlying problem is that I had introduced a routine C# compilation error
in C# code declared in a .razor file. VS2022 was dropping the display of the error from the Build Error List tab. I found the C# error by scanning the build output in the Output console log tab where my C# error was described as expected.
p.s. In case you are wondering, I had a Unit Test project referencing my Blazor web project. The project DLL reference from the Unit Test project to the Blazor app was complaining about the missing Blazor DLL.
Based on the error message I don't believe the file path is being truncated. It looks to just be incorrect. If I'm reading the message correctly it appears to be looking for the DLL file at ...
WORK=-\Tools\VersionManagementSystem\BusinessLogicLayer\bin\Debug\BusinessLogicLayer.dll
This is not a valid path. Is it possible that you have a macro definition in the build process set to an invalid value?
I'd faced the same problem. In my case I'd referenced to a class library project with higher .Net version than my project and VS failed to build the project and raised the same error you posted.
I simply set .Net version of my class library project(the one that had broken the build) identical to the .Net version of referenced project and problem solved.
Just pointing out the blatantly obvious: if you don't have "Show output window when build starts" enabled, make sure you're noticing if your build is failing (small "build failed" error in lower left)!!!!
I had this error when I was trying to publish a web application. Turned out that one of a class properties was wrapped into
#if DEBUG
public int SomeProperty { get; set; }
#endif
but the property usage was not. The publishing was done in Release configuration without the DEBUG symbol, obviously.