Fixes for Common VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Beta2 Issues

It has been a little over a week since we released Beta 2 of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5.  So far the feedback from people using it has been really great. I've received a lot of emails from people saying it is the best beta we've ever shipped, and several who have moved over to using it full time for all development.

I have also helped people with a few gotchas that they have run into (mainly around setup / installation).  Below are some notes on the issues I've seen as well as how to fix them:

Setup / Installation Issues

Control Toolbox is Empty: We've seen several people run into a situation where when they create a new ASP.NET Web-site or Web-application with VS 2008 they find that the Control Toolbox is empty, and no intellisense is provided in source-view.  This problem indicates that the .NET 3.5 version of System.Web.dll did not get installed correctly due to interference with some of the .NET Framework Hotfixes already on the machine.  This blog post describes how to fix this issue.

JavaScript Intellisense and Colorization Not Enabled: We've seen some people run into a situation where JavaScript code colorization and intellisense isn't enabled due to a registry setting not getting configured correctly during setup.  This blog post describes how to fix this issue.

Setup Asks for Windows XP SP2 on Windows Vista: We've seen a few people run into issues on Windows Vista where either VS 2008 or .NET Framework 3.5 Beta2 prompts users with an error message asking them to install Windows XP SP2 (even though they are running Vista!).  This blog post describes how to work around this issue.

DevEnv /resetsettings: If you have ever installed a previous version of "Orcas" or VS 2008 on your machine (either Beta1 or one of the CTP versions), you need to reset your VS 2008 settings after installing Beta2.  If you don't do this, you'll have an odd set of settings configured (some windows will be in the wrong place), and you'll potentially see some IDE performance slowness.  You can reset your settings by typing "DevEnv /resetsettings" on the command-line against the VS 2008 version of the IDE.  I cover how to-do this in my Beta 2 Release Blog Post.

.NET 3.5 Web Sites and LINQ to SQL in Partial Trust: The default trust policy for the LINQ and LINQ to SQL assemblies, as well as the web.config file for .NET 3.5 ASP.NET web-sites do not allow applications to be run in medium trust environments.  This can impact you if you deploy your application to a remote hoster.  This blog post describes how to enable this in Beta2 (you won't need to take these steps for the final release).

ASP.NET AJAX Multi-Targeting

DisableAjaxPolicy.exe: As I mentioned in my initial Beta 2 Release Blog Post, we discovered a side-by-side issue with ASP.NET AJAX right before we shipped Beta 2. You'll want to make sure you run the DisableAjaxPolicy script after installing VS 2008 to fix this (it only takes a few seconds to run).

Multi-Targeting ASP.NET AJAX with VS 2008: You can use Visual Studio 2008 to build ASP.NET AJAX applications using both .NET 2.0 and ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 and .NET 3.5 using ASP.NET AJAX 3.5.  I talked about how this works in my ASP.NET AJAX in .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 blog post.  Because of the DisableAjaxPolicy patch above, targeting ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 applications using VS 2008 doesn't work as smoothly as we'd like in Beta 2.  This Using VS 2008 to Target ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 blog post discusses the best way to enable this in Beta 2.

Online Forums

Here are some pointers to on-line forums where you can ask questions or get help:

To report bugs you find, please visit http://connect.microsoft.com/.  Alternatively, you can send me email and I will forward them to the right team.

Thanks,

Scott

46 Comments

  • It's funny how every time the new Visual Studio beta comes out, I wonder how I ever lived without it.

    I was in the middle of writing a JavaScript function to dynamically create an HTML anchor... I gave it a cusom property by doing a 'myAnchor.SomeProperty = 123' kinda thing... a little later on I was writing the "onclick" method for that anchor, so I was typing "myAnchor.onclick = function() { this." ... and as I pressed 'dot', an intellisense window popped up and it had my property in it ... I almost cried. (not literally, but I definately take my hat off to you folks).

  • Beta 2 is very good, I have not found any problem.
    P.S. What happened? Your post does not end with "Hope this helps".

  • Hi Timothy,

    >>>>>> It's funny how every time the new Visual Studio beta comes out, I wonder how I ever lived without it.

    That is great to hear! :-)

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Tomas,

    >>>>> P.S. What happened? Your post does not end with "Hope this helps".

    I actually origionally wrote it that way, but for some reason thought it might sound weird with the previous sentence. I will make sure the next one returns back to normal. ;-)

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • I have found one problem so far and that is i can no longer use the activeX quicktime control element it raises errors saying activex control elements without windows/borders are not supported. Any solution to this issue ?

  • Orcas is a good product but i have a lot of crash with this release, for me the beta 1 was more reliable :s.

  • After typing in VS 2008 Express Beta 2, some tmp files are created that I cannot delete on Windows Vista Home Basic (UAC turned on). I tried several ways such as delete in an elevated command prompt, but none succeeded.

    Is there a way to remove these files from my hard disk? If it is a bug of "AutoRecover" feature, I wish this feature were never included in VS.

  • Hi there,
    Its great to use this new version , the thing which i want to ask you is that if i had my web Application in 2.0 , is it possible to dynamically change my framework for the web application project to 3.5 or 3.0

  • I've not had any issues with Beta2 either. I just uninstalled VS 2005 - not something I would have ever done if I didn't trust the Beta :)

    Could I make a couple of small (if not petty) requests?
    1. When looking at the DataContext in the visual designer, could the fields not expose the IsVersion property in the property window? It seems to be the only attribute missing.
    2. What happened to the horizontal lines in the property window? I'm getting on, my eyesight is failing, my wife wants to change me for a younger man - I need all the help I can get.......
    Thanks
    Jeremy

  • hi Scott how about the installation issues on Vista? i think you should had it to your list

  • Hi, Scott.

    VS 2008 is very good, but there is one thing - the color of VS GUI. I use Vista in black color and that light blue destroy my eyes. It would be nice to change GUI theme to dark. Like in Expression studio or Office 2007...

  • I have installed ASP.Net Futures, when I add a web form (no hand code) and compile I get this error.

    Make sure that the class defined in this code file matches the 'inherits' attribute, and that it extends the correct base class (e.g. Page or UserControl)

    Any idea? how to resolve it?

    Thanks
    Imtiaz

  • Hi Scott,
    Great to see that there is a fix for the "Control Toolbox is Empty" bug, shame that its such a labour intensive and manual fix that seems to have limited success.
    I am waiting for re-install to see :) Fingers crossed!

    Everything else seems awesome though, an excellent and well timed update to 2005! :)

  • Hey Scott, any idea about this issue ?
    VS 2008 Beta 2: IDE fails to load the XML Editor and Workflow Designer Packages.
    https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=289512

    Thanks alot for all your posts btw ;)

  • hmmm. thanks for this post. many people have been asking me about these problems in VS 2008 beta 2. Now I can redirect them to one post to get all the answers :)

  • Hi Yann,

    >>>>>> Orcas is a good product but i have a lot of crash with this release, for me the beta 1 was more reliable :s.

    If you can send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) with more details on any crashes you are seeing, I can have someone help investigate what is going on. In general we've heard and seen very few crash reports - so I'd definitely like to understand this better.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Lex,

    >>>>> After typing in VS 2008 Express Beta 2, some tmp files are created that I cannot delete on Windows Vista Home Basic (UAC turned on). I tried several ways such as delete in an elevated command prompt, but none succeeded.

    If you can send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) I can have someone help investigate what the problem here might be.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Rahman,

    >>>>>> Its great to use this new version , the thing which i want to ask you is that if i had my web Application in 2.0 , is it possible to dynamically change my framework for the web application project to 3.5 or 3.0

    If you pull up your project's properties, you can update it to use 3.5. I show how to-do this in this post here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/06/20/vs-2008-multi-targeting-support.aspx

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Jeremy,

    >>>>> 2. What happened to the horizontal lines in the property window? I'm getting on, my eyesight is failing, my wife wants to change me for a younger man - I need all the help I can get.......

    You should still be seeing horizontal lines in the property grid. Are you using an ASP.NET project? Can you send me a screen-shot of the behavior you are seeing (scottgu@microsoft.com)?

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Raurus,

    >>>>> VS 2008 is very good, but there is one thing - the color of VS GUI. I use Vista in black color and that light blue destroy my eyes. It would be nice to change GUI theme to dark. Like in Expression studio or Office 2007...

    Unfortunately VS 2008 doesn't have built-in theme supports like Expression does - instead it picks up its colors from the operating system. It is something we are thinking about for the future though.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Imtiaz,

    >>>>>> I have installed ASP.Net Futures, when I add a web form (no hand code) and compile I get this error. Make sure that the class defined in this code file matches the 'inherits' attribute, and that it extends the correct base class (e.g. Page or UserControl) Any idea? how to resolve it?

    Do you have the new ASP.NET Futures build that just came out last week? I think the April version has a few issues with Beta2.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Steven,

    >>>>>>> Hi Scott, I'm failing on the first step of B2 install, .Net Framework 3.5. So I'm trying to install it seperately and I can't find a redistributable for B2 of the framework. Is there one available? Also the download manager for Framework is funny; apparently at times the transfer rate is in the negatives (ie, at one stage it was even less than -35000000000Kb! I don't have this much data on my HDD though!

    If you can send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) I can have someone help investigate what the problem here might be.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Mohammed,

    >>>>>>> Hey Scott, any idea about this issue ? VS 2008 Beta 2: IDE fails to load the XML Editor and Workflow Designer Packages.

    I've seen a few other people run into this registration issue. If you can send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) I can have someone help investigate what the problem here might be.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Scott,

    First I added a ListView control on my page, then I added a Button or LinkButton under the ListView control. When I double-click the Button or LinkButton, it cannot take me to the codebehind default event handlers and the default handler codes are even not displayed. But if the buttons are above ListView control, the double-click can take me to the default handlers correctly.

    Why the ListView affects buttons bellow it?

    Thanks.

  • Any fixes for Mobile Asp.Net controls not showing in the Toolbox ?

  • Scott,

    VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Beta2 sound like great tools. We have a commercial product written in classic ASP, and we will soon be rewriting it using .NET, and I hope AJAX. We have the choice of using .NET 2.0 and AJAX 1.0, or we could go the .NET 3.5 route and VS 2008. We figure it will take us a year at least to completely rewrite our product. Should we use VS 2008 and .NET 3.5? Or should we use .NET 2.0 and AJAX 1.0 since that is released and presumably more stable?

    Thanks,

    Hank

  • i have also noticed an odd situation usng third-party controls in the deisgner. when i try to change something in the designer with many controls, both msft and third-party, vs 2008 modifies the code with a bunch of lines of " " (without the quotes)... soemtimes overwriting controls that were on the webform. i have an example image on my blog (msftguy.com). Otherwise, I have been completely impressed with scott and team's work on this beta.

  • Since VS 2008 Beta 2 is out, I have no need for Dreamweaver anymore. My main concern was the split panel, I'm loving it. One thing I wish it could have... is a better ftp function. In Dreamweaver, I can just hit Ctrl + Shift + "U", and it uploads the file to the appropriate spot based on my settings. Other than that, can't wait for the final release. =)

  • Any updates/fixes to not being able to install the .NET 3.5 Framework on Vista??? (errors out with Error Code 34)

  • Hi Scott,

    i tried running the Control Toolbox is Empty fix (which included a couple of hours of uninstalling/reinstalling) and I still can't get access to view asp & user controls or the toolbox. It looks like i'm not the only one... I feel like the kid who didn't get picked for dodgeball when i keep hearing how great this version is - how do i get help???

    Thanks!

    Ryan

  • Hi Scott,

    I am already running with VS 2008 as my only dev environment :) Here are a couple of things that I came across:

    The build is not playing nicely with 120 DPI. Almost all the right-click popup menus in Solution Explorer show up beyond the screen boundries and all the intellisense pop-ups show weird positioning; always obscuring the current caret position. Menu items and code look a little fuzzy too.

    Turning off display scaling (from right click devenv -> properties -> compatibility tab in Vista) brings back things to normal.

    Also, when in a Web Project, right clicking the project and selecting Add -> Add ASP.NET Folder, does not show the App_Code folder any longer. I changed the target framework version to 2.0 but that didn't affect this behavior. Is it by design?

    Thanks!
    Deepak

  • I have found that on both of my Vista machines DExplore.exe or dotnetfx35.exe fail to install becuse they tell that the "program is too big to fit in memory". I have 2Gig Ram and 3Gig page file.

  • I tested more on GridView, ListView, etc. All have similar problems to the buttons bellow them. It cannot take you to the default Click handlers when double-clicking them. It can only take you to the Page_Load handler.

    This should be a bug.

  • Hi, is there any hotfix for System.Data breaking change in .NET 2.0 after NET 3.5 installs? This breaking change is mentioned at devexpress.com in their blogs. Thanks

  • I no longer have lc.exe on my machine? This is cauing me problems with my .licx files and website compilation.

  • Hi Scott,

    Trying to install VS 2008 beta 2 on a machine running Vista. Think I've un-installed all necessary Orcas bits, but am still getting the warning: "These pre-release products might include, but are not limited to, the following: - MDSN Library for Visual Studio Orcas - ENU". However, I don't see this under Programs and Features, and it's blocking me from the beta 2 installation. Any ideas?
    Thanks!
    Pete

  • Hi Pete,

    >>>>>> Trying to install VS 2008 beta 2 on a machine running Vista. Think I've un-installed all necessary Orcas bits, but am still getting the warning: "These pre-release products might include, but are not limited to, the following: - MDSN Library for Visual Studio Orcas - ENU". However, I don't see this under Programs and Features, and it's blocking me from the beta 2 installation. Any ideas?

    If you can send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) I can loop in someone from the setup team to help figure out what is going wrong.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Still no answer to the following question and it keeps getting removed for some reason or another.

    I have found one problem so far and that is i can no longer use the activeX quicktime control element it raises errors saying activex control elements without windows/borders are not supported. Any solution to this issue ?

  • Hi Patrick,

    >>>>>> I have found one problem so far and that is i can no longer use the activeX quicktime control element it raises errors saying activex control elements without windows/borders are not supported. Any solution to this issue ?

    Would you be able to send me an email (scottgu@microsoft.com) with more details about this error? I can then loop in some folks to investigate and figure out what is going on.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • This is a very good job. But Microsoft Report Viewer is disappointing. some part of most jobs of Microsoft is always missing. why Microsoft Report Viewer still can't export to MS Word? it can export to Pdf,Excel and Image but not MS WORD and RTF, isn't it disappointing ? the only reason we can't move from crystal to rdlc is this. If you know something about this issue please let me know.
    Thanks for VS 2008.

  • I am still amazed of how well even BETA versions work, when Microsoft release new products. I've only had one issue with VS2008 BETA 2, that was the JavaScript Intellisense disappearing after a Silverlight uninstall. I just fired up the VS2008 installer and chose repair - and then it was fixed.

    Keep working!

  • VS 2008 Beta 2 does not appear to have a way to handle deployment of InfoPath 2007 workflow initiation/task forms used in a custom SharePoint 2007 Workflow. This is a step backwards from VS 2005, which created a PostBuildEvent.bat file along with special Deployment folders for just such a purpose the moment you created a new SharePoint Sequential Workflow (or SharePoint State Machine Workflow). Will this oversite be corrected prior to the release date of February 27, 2008?

  • Hi Fred,

    >>>>>>>> VS 2008 Beta 2 does not appear to have a way to handle deployment of InfoPath 2007 workflow initiation/task forms used in a custom SharePoint 2007 Workflow. This is a step backwards from VS 2005, which created a PostBuildEvent.bat file along with special Deployment folders for just such a purpose the moment you created a new SharePoint Sequential Workflow (or SharePoint State Machine Workflow). Will this oversite be corrected prior to the release date of February 27, 2008?

    I'm not aware of this issue - can you send me an email (scottgu@microsoft.com) about this, and I'll loop you in with someone from that team to get an answer.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Scott,

    I get errors on VS 2008 beta2 using VC++ when building a simple project. Either using the
    console mode or the Windows Forms Application and not even adding or adding toolbox button or labels I get Project:error PRJ003: Error spawning 'resgen.exe'.
    Same problem occurs in VC# also using Windows Forms Application.

    I also get some other errors such as afxv_w32.h contains #include Windows.h which the builder doesn't like because it cannot find it.

    Finally a linker error LINK:fatal error LNK1104: Cannot open file 'MSCOREE.lib'.

    I have uninstalled the beta2 and will try reinstalling it again. This is happening in the 2008 Beta2 Pro Version.

    Sincerely,
    John

  • - The .NET 3.5 Compact framework won't install on my Windows Mobile 6 device (HTC TyTN with Mobile 6 upgraded rom by HTC).
    All I get is Error (4) or something

    - If I install .NET 3.5 on the Windows 2003 server, none of ASP.NET pages work anymore (after some time)
    (Even after removing the xmlns entries)

  • I've just solved the dexplore incorrect configuration problem. After uninstalling it from the WCU directory I deleted the "microsoft shared help\help 9" directory before reinstalling. It's now OK.

    Chris Jobson

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