Monday, December 29, 2008

VS2008 crash on "Choose items" in toolbox

So, today I was trying to include some MS Ajax control toolkit stuff on the web pages I'm building for a client. I right clicked on the toolbox, added a tab and clicked "Choose Items" then VS up and died on me. Lather rinse and repeat.

Obviously something was very wrong here. After some googling I found a solution:
- Start VS from VS command line in safe mode: devenv.exe /safemode
- Click "Choose items" again.
- be sure to click all the tabs in the dialogue
- observe an exception somewhere, and VS will disable the faulty control
- quit the safemode VS.
- restart regular VS and try again

.. VOILA!!

7 comments:

Rick said...

Just what the doctor ordered! I've been looking all over the place and following false leads to solve this problem. Turned out to be an issue with Microsoft.ReportingServices.Interfaces.dll.

Thanks for the post.

Andrew's Blog said...

Great hint. Worked for me as well.

Most other comments on the web point toward PowerCommands for VS. That wasn't my issue, though.

Your post saved me.

Unknown said...

My VS 2008 crashes in safemode as well. !

Stephen Adam said...

Cheers mate, really helped me out. Only needed to run in safe mode and the issue dispeared!

jphillips said...

Awesome... Indeed, Power commands was listed as a high probability for the culprit, but in my case this was the fix I needed. Thanks for posting!

Ümit Coşkun Aydınoğlu said...

I don't know what the cause but it crashes in any options. safe mode does not help

Unknown said...

There is a work-around:
Add the control to the toolbox in VS2010.
Select the control in the tool box, RightClick->Copy.
Go to VS2008, select the tab in toolbox you wish to add this control to, Right Click->Paste.