VS2005 Beta2 Exits abrubply when trying to add a custom windows control to a form
I have been building a Solution of three main projects in VS2005 and recently installed Beta2. When starting the application, VS2005 would bomb out almost immediately. If a breakpoint was added and the application stepped through, it ran fine.
Later in the day, other actions like editing in the designer started to cause the same problem of the designer abruptly exiting.
At some point I edited the Designer window content of the main project form and thought this might be the problem, so I created a new form to replicate the original form functionality, and moved the main custom control into its own project.
All references between projects are set and the project builds OK, but when attempting to drag and drop the custom control in the toolbox to the main application form, visual studio bombs out.
I have tried referencing, then loading the custom control into a new Windows project form and the same thiing happens.
I have cleaned the project, deleted existing project DLL's before rebuild, and checked the indicated version in the toolbox matches the DLL.
As the project was progressing, and the custom control was on the form, attepting to add other controls caused the project to bomb out. I tried adding a button in code, but couldn'e see it on the designer.
Anyone else getting this, or know of a log file to check?
OK, after some playing around, I seem to have stabalised the system.
The custom control inherited from a treeview, and contained an image list. I took everything I could out of the custom control except the image list. Another application attempting to load the custom control onto a windows form caused an immediate and sharp exit.
Copying the image list to another form and compiling the custom control again, allowed it to be dropped into another project OK.
Copying the image list back to the custom control and compiling proved to work OK, so the entire original solution was put back to its original state and now works.
Lessons Learned :-
In a Windows Custom Control, It is likley that the InitializeComponent method contents SHOULD NOT be edited by the developer. Any changes should be performed by using the designer itself. Additional initialisation can be performed before / after the call to this method. Windows Forms do contain a message to the developer not t o edit certain sections.
The contents of the above method were slightly different when I re-constiituted it by copying back the original Image List. There also seem to be some small changes from Beta1 to Beta2 (in terms of what is added by the designer).
Stabilisation did not last into many new builds.
The solution ran OK for a while, then randomly started exiting whilst editing, or initially running the application, or during application use.
I reset the PC, cleaned the solution, deleted project DLL's, but to no great avail.
Running the project in Release mode rather than Debug appears to be stable
