Missing toolbox and templates. C# Express 2010

Question

Until now, Visual C# Express 2010 has worked well for me.

Yesterday, I was editing a Windows Forms project and I noticed that the tool box was empty.  It said "General" and "There are no usable controls in this group".  I get the same problem if I create a new Windows Forms project, or try to edit an old one.

I searched the web and tried all the fixes I could find: deleting tbd files, resetting the toolbox, changing options, etc. I found some command line hacks but I couldn't see how to apply them to VC#

I also de-installed and re-installed several times and now I find that I have an additional problem: I seem to have lost all the templates so I can no longer create a new project or add a new class.

Help please

Bob

Answer 1

The toolbox is contextual so unless you had a form open in the designer the toolbox would be empty.  Resetting the toolbox should have resolved any issues.  It is possible that your VS settings are corrupted.  You should consider using the /resetsettings option to reset your VS profile.  Alternatively you could try resetting the settings via Tools\Import and Export Settings first.

The templates are stored on disk where you installed VS.  It sounds like you could be having hard drive issues.  Are you out of disk space?  Is there a permissions problem?  If you uninstalled and reinstalled something might have been corrupted.  You might consider uninstalling VS, deleting the directory where VS was installed along with the directory under your documents and then reinstall and apply SP1 again.

Michael Taylor - 5/1/2012
http://msmvps.com/blogs/p3net