I'm working on a winform app.
The design view worked well until I renamed the Form1.cs to FormMain.cs.
The program itself is ok. It can be compiled with no error and it runs well(with right form). But visual studio keep warning me that there are mistakes in FormMain.cs. It seems that FormMain class in FormMain.Designer.cs is totally ignore as it alerts "InitializeComponent(); is not defined."
And the design view goes blank as if the form was just newly-created.
IntelliSense tells me the origin(not yet renamed) Designer.cs is not found.
Now if I try to create anything on the blank form, the code is directly written in FormMain.cs.
How can I solve this?
Thanks.
Using Visual Studio 2019, I was following the C# WPF tutorial from Microsoft docs. Along the way, there is a step wherein you rename MainWindow.xaml to Greetings.xaml. When I did this, the design view was gone. Restarting Visual Studio fixes the design view. Of course, save your files before restarting.
Removing the form and adding it again to the solution fixes this issue. Here's how you can do:
Right click on the FormMain in the solution explorer and "Exclude From Project". Now right-click on the solution and click Add -> Existing Item and select the FormMain.cs from the same solution folder.
I'm working on a windows form application. I start a new project. I delete the Form1 stuff from the new project. I go and add from existing in the solution explorer and choose Form1.cs, Form1.Designer.cs, and Form1.resx from another project. When I look at the designer Form1 just looks blank, like a new one would with none of the controls appearing. The program still compiles fine with all it's controls intact. Did I miss a step somewhere? I've closed and reopened the project etc. This happens every single time repeatedly so I believe I'm missing something but searching here or the rest of the web hasn't provided me a solution. Maybe it's just assumed to be known by everyone already?
I am just learning c# and Visual Studio so hopefully I didn't miss something stupid. I was following direction for how to do this from a book. Some projects are re-used to teach a new idea so they have you start a new project and add in existing items from the original to then work on the new idea.
In VS 2013 I chose "Add existing Item" and just selected the .cs files, don't add *.Designer.cs and *.resx files. Then waited for few minutes and restarted VS2013. Designer.cs and resx files appeared as associated with Forms but they were excluded. I right clicked them and chose "Include In Project". Then it worked fine.
Make sure that you are loading the Form1 that you think you are loading.
By default, Visual Studio 2013 (on Windows 7) will create a folder in Documents (C:\Users*Your user name*\Documents) called "Projects". Whenever you create a new project from within Visual Studio by going to File->New Project, Visual Studio will (by default) create a new folder in the Projects folder with the project name.
I think when you "delete" Form1, you're not actually deleting it, just removing it from the project. When you go to add Form1, you're just selecting it from the same project folder, when you actually wanted to load it from a different project folder.
Try this: In your current project (the one where you deleted Form1 and then added it), in the Solution Explorer, right click on the project, and select "Open Folder in File Explorer".
This will open the project folder on disk. Now, delete Form1.cs from within Visual Studio, and switch back to the project folder. If Form1.cs is still in that project folder, then you just removed it from the project. The actual files still exist on disk. When adding existing items, Visual Studio will typically default to the selected project folder.
I have a very strong suspicion that the Form1 that you are really looking for resides in a different project folder. Without knowing the book or tutorial you are following, I can't give you any hints as to where the Form1 you want is located.
Seemingly a vicious circle here. I've just taken on a project that won't build. The reason it won't build is because I have a lot of "does not exist in the current context" errors with regards to controls that definitely would exist in the current context if I could view the forms in design mode. But I can't view them in design mode because they inherit from a class that inherits from Form that seems to be causing a problem.
Now, I thought the problem may have been that the class that inherits from Form may have been accidentally tampered with as it had the form icon in the solution explorer but should have been just the standard .cs file. So I 'broke it out' of that context and put it in a new .cs file (as explained somewhere else on another SO thread). So I'm stuck here now, don't know what to do.
Error message:
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: frmMain --- The base class 'MyCustomForm.MyCustomForm' could not be loaded. Ensure the assembly has been referenced and that all projects have been built.
Comment out all of the code that uses those controls, build your project, then uncomment them.
Try debugging Visual Studio using a second instance of Visual Studio.
1. Launch first instance of Visual Studio, and load your project. Don't open the designer yet.
2. Launch a second instance of Visual Studio, and select Debug/Attach To Process on the menu to start debugging the first instance of Visual Studio (devenv.exe). Make sure the Output Window is visible, and ensure that enable catching exceptions.
3. In the original instance of Visual Studio, open the Form designer for the Form that is giving you problems.
4. In the second instance of Visual Studio, watch the Output Window and handle any exceptions that occur. This may give you enough information to see what is going wrong.
A C# desktop application (on the Visual Studio Express edition) worked, but then it didn't work 5 seconds later.
I tried the following:
Ensure debug configuration, debug flag, and full debug information are set on all assemblies.
Delete all bin and obj folders and all DLL files related to the project from my entire machine.
Recreate projects causing the problem from scratch.
Reboot.
I have two Windows Forms projects in the solution. One of them loads the debug information, one doesn't. They both refer to the assembly I'm trying to get debug information on in exactly the same way in the project file. Any ideas?
I want to add here, mostly for myself when I come back to review this question, that symbols are not loaded until the assembly is loaded, and the assembly is not loaded until it is needed. If the breakpoint is in a library that is only used in one function in your main assembly, the symbols will not be loaded (and it will show the breakpoint as not being hit) until that function is called.
Start debugging, as soon as you've arrived at a breakpoint or used Debug > Break All, use Debug > Windows > Modules. You'll see a list of all the assemblies that are loaded into the process. Locate the one you want to get debug info for. Right-click it and select Symbol Load Information. You'll get a dialog that lists all the directories where it looked for the .pdb file for the assembly. Verify that list against the actual .pdb location. Make sure it doesn't find an old one.
In normal projects, the assembly and its .pdb file should always have been copied by the IDE into the same folder as your .exe, i.e. the bin\Debug folder of your project. Make sure you remove one from the GAC if you've been playing with it.
Check to make sure that you are not in release but in Debug.
When in debug:
First try rebuilding your project by right mouse click the project > Rebuild
If that doesn't work, try a clean of the project (right mouse click on the project > clean)
If that didn't work check this:
Right mouse click your project
Select [Properties]
Select the [Build] tab
Make sure [Define DEBUG constant] and [Define TRACE constant] are checked
Make sure [Optimize Code] is unchecked
Click the [Advanced] button at the bottom of the Build tabpage
Make sure that [Debug Info:] is set to [full]
Click [OK] and rebuild the project ;-)
(step 7 generates the .pdb files, these are the debugging symbols)
Uncheck the "Enable Just My Code" option in the
Tools/Options/Debugging/General
Just something simple to try - you may have tried it already.
Right click the Solution in solution explorer, click "clean solution", this deletes all the compiled and temporary files associated with a solution.
Do a rebuild of the solution and try to debug again.
I've also had troubles with breakpoints multiple projects in a solution - some compiled as x86, some as x64.
The selected answer led me to fix my problem. But I need to do a few things more:
Even with "Debug" selected in the dropdown:
And in the project Properties > Build:
The Visual Studio was not loading symbols to a specific project. So in that dropdown I select "Configuration Manager" and saw that the settings to my web project was incorrect:
Then I set that to "Debug" and it started to generate the .pdb file.
BUT I need to manually copy the PDB and DLL and put in the folder that VS was looking (here is where the selected answer helped me):
Sometimes, even though it gives you this error, the Breakpoint still gets hit, so just ignore the error.
This happens fairly often in the Views of an MVC web app, i.e. .cshtml.
I was able to fix the error by simply setting the option in the 'Attach to Process' to 'Automatically determine the type of code to debug' option as shown in the attached screenshot.
Simply follow the steps below:
Go to Debug from the menu bar
Click on Attach to Process
Near the Attach to option, click on the Select button
The Select Code Type window will appear
Now select the option Automatically determine the type of code to debug and click the OK button.
Debug > Windows > Modules to see what modules were being loaded put me in the right direction.
In my case IIS Express seemed to be loading a different DLL from the temporary ASP.NET files.
The solution?
Browse to C:\Users\<YOUR USER>\AppData\Local\Temp\Temporary ASP.NET Files\vs
Delete everything in this directory!
Check if your .pbd file is missing in your bin/Debug folder. If it is then go to "Properties" of your project, selected "Build" and then "Advanced" at the bottom. Choose "full" under "Debug info" in the new window that appeared. This was my issue and solved it for me.
In my case "Optimize Code" was checked in my project properties. This caused VS to see my assembly as "not my code", and in turn, it did not load symbols for it.
The solution was to uncheck this.
Try running visual studio as an administrator within windows.
You need to enable "Generate debug info" in compiler settings
I tried everything mentioned above, but nothing worked.
[Clean solution, and check for PDB files etc.]
Even publishing the same solution did not resolve the issue.
Then I went to back to what I usually do to resolve (fool this stubborn Visual Studio)
All I did was to make a deliberate change in code and publish the solution.
Then I reverted the change and published again.
Voila [PDB files rid of evil spirits].. Not a smart resolution, but this did work.. :-|
We found the cause of our problem. This code was using the "CodeBehind" attribute in the Page directive of the .aspx file instead of the "CodeFile" attribute (ASP.NET 2.0 and beyond). After days of desperation, a simple search and replace solved the problem.
Option "Start debugging, Debug + Windows + Modules" does not exist in Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2013 edition.
Unchecking "Use Managed Compatibility Mode" in Tools Options Debugging fixes this.
Webapplications (IIS Express) only:
Rightclick IIS Express Tray and close the IIS.
Clean Solution
Clean solution and Rebuild
Check the configuration is set to Debug
Make sure that the PDB file is in the Debug folder it self
From Debug menu click Enable All Break points
Make sure you're in Debug and not is release by choosing debug in the dropdown menu like you can see in the picture below.
Then, try cleaning your project by clicking the right button in your mouse on the solution in the solution explorer window and choosing Clean solution.
Then rebuild your solution by clicking the right button in your mouse on the solution in the solution explorer window and choose Rebuild solution
Check are the following two setting the same in Visual Studio:
Right click test project, go to Properties, Build tab, and look at Platform target
Mine are all set to "Any CPU" so x64
On the Main Menu bar, go to Test, Test Settings, Default Processor Architecture
Mine was set to X86
Changing this to X64 to match above setting made the built in Visual Studio menu “Debug Test(s)” work and hit breakpoints that were previously ignored with the message “The breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document”.
Update:
For Visual Studio 2019 the menus have been moved around a bit:
I also had the same issue what I rebuild the whole solution (including refereced projects) in x86( or x64)
Even though I set all of my projects to x86 from Configuration Manager (Build->ConfigManager) some of my projects were not set to x86.
So Just to make sure right click on the project and follow
project -> properties -> Debug Tab, verify Configuration and Platform.
The .dll where I want to stop debugger and the associated .pdb files where copied near the .exe file. Those files had an older date so I thought they weren't updated in the runtime. I manually deleted them, Visual Studio create another pair AND put this new pair near the .exe. Now the breakpoint works!
Maybe Visual Studio cannot copy and REPLACE existing files (.dll and .pdb) near the .exe since there are another there. So if I deleted manually then VS could create new one near .exe.
I think that the root cause of the problem is that the Visual Studio use another file in runtime, no the file from the project, with the stop.
Instead of doing all these things just Close and reopen
Project Properties (then select your build config) > Build Tab > Advanced... > Debug Info (dropdown)
Set to 'all' or 'pdb-only' then rebuild
This took me a while tried other options above and for some strange reason debugging stopped working.
Tool -> Options -> Debugging -> General -> (untick) "Require source files to exactly match the original version" option
I was integrating a C# application with a static library using VS10 - which I'm new to. I wrote a managed code dll to interface them. I could set breakpoints everywhere but the static lib. I got the message described above - no symbols have been loaded for this document. I tried many of the suggestions above. I could see that the symbols weren't being loaded. I finally noticed a check box Configuration Debug, Enable unmanaged code debugging. That allowed me to set breakpoints in the static lib functions.
In my case, I was compiling a class library (DLL). No modules seem to be loaded in Debug -> Modules, so I couldn't even load the symbols manually.
My solution was to add this line to my code:
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch();
Once this code is reached, an exception is triggered and .NET Framework shows a dialog box asking which Visual Studio (i.e. new instance of VS 2008, new instance of VS 2013, etc) you want to use to debug the program. You can choose the existing instance of VS with your project loaded. This will attach the process to your VS session and load all symbols, and now you can debug your project.
Of course, the compilation has to be done using the Debug configuration, not Release.
For an ASP.Net application, check the properties of the site, ASP.NET tab. Ensure that the correct ASP.NET version is selected.
I think the source if this error is, the debug symbols have a hard time surfacing to the solution after building for release.
I tried all the other answers -- generally, regenerating .pdb symbols or checking their location, cleaning and rebuilding project, ensuring active configuration is not Release etc.
What eventually worked for me is right-clicking on the project in solution explorer > Debug > Start new instance.
After trying a bunch of these, the thing that ultimately worked for me was this:
In Debug > Options > General, uncheck Enable Edit and Continue.
this happened to me after copy paste another webservice asmx file into an existing webservice, resulting in the same error when trying to debug the recently added service, to be able to debug I had to start without debug, then attach to the process. its weird but its the only way i found to be able to debug.