Toolbox Missing Controls

Question

I was working in Visual Studio 2005 on Vista with SP1 and the Update for Vista installed.  I had been working with a Visual Basic / Smart Device / Windows CE 5.0 project.  After testing on Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Emulator and returning to modify the form, I found the Toolbox went into "Initializing Toolbox" before displaying and when it did finally display, I'm left with the following controls:

All Device Controls

  Pointer

  BindingSource

Common Device Controls

  Pointer

  Button

#13119

I've reinstalled SP1 and the Update for Vista but still not controls.  Anyone with ideas before I uninstall/reinstall?

Answer 1

Try to right click on the Toolbox and select "Reset Toolbox"

Pablo

Answer 2

Did that.

I was able to add some controls back, but couldn't get the Common Controls added back.  It was as if the DLL(s) disappeared from the disk.

After uninstalling and reinstalling Visual Studio 2005, all I got was Catastrophic Error when attempting to open a project.  So, I ended up restoring from a backup to resolve the problem.

Answer 3

Please let us know if you experience this again; I'd like to investigate it, as it doesn't sound like a problem we've seen before.  If you can figure out what actions cause it to happen, that would be very helpful.

Thanks,

-Josh

 

Answer 4

The only thing I can remember doing is having a Pocket PC Emulator open at the time I accidentally closed Visual Studio 2005.  I would normally close all emulators, and then close Visual Studio 2005.  Upon reopening VS2005, the controls were missing in the Toolbox.

Answer 5

Hi,

FYI, the same thing just happened to me while working on a Winforms UserControl project.   I'm not sure exactly when or how it happened, but when I shut down last night everything was fine, and when I fired up VS2005 this morning my toolbox was hosed.  I installed vsSP1 and the Vista VS2005 sp a couple of days ago.

Resetting the toolbox has no effect.  The #13119 tab cannot be removed (delete tab menu option disabled).  All my added components appear lost...

Jason

Answer 6

I Found the Problem:

I have had the same issue for a while, and do not have Vista installed yet.

It started bothering me so much that I decided to investigate why.

 

It turns out that the problem is caused by "Solution Folders".

All controls from projects that are in Solutions Folders do not turn up in the Toolbox after closing and reopening the solution.

 

If you move a project into a solution folder, its controls remain in the Toolbox until the solution has been closed an reopened.

 

This must be a bug.

 

 

Answer 7

Hi,

I had two problems at once.  First, General went to #13119 ... I fixed this by going into my profile as follows:

C:\Documents and Settings\MYUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\ProjectAssemblies

There are four HIDDEN files in there that make up what is apparently the toolbox cache.  If you erase them, they will be re-generated and #13119 will go back to General.  As I said, these files appear to be hidden so configure the file explorer accordingly.

Second problem: my User controls disappeared from the toolbox.  Lots of ideas floating around here, including "The project can't be in a solutions folder," "I can't believe Microsoft didn't fix this in SP1," etc.  OK maybe, but this seems more like a setting that mysteriously changes itself, rather than an actual bug.  I was able to fix it by going into the VS menus:

1. Visual Studio "Tools" menu
   
2. "Options" submenu
   
3. "Windows Form Designer" tab
4. "General" tab
5. Set "AutoToolboxPopulate" to "True"

I'm not sure how on earth it got set to false in the first place.  I was happily working along when I looked back in the toolbox and my UserControls had vanished.

If this helps you, post a reply here and let me know.

--Chris

Answer 8

Interesting information.

However, AutoToolboxPopulate is set to true in my VS2005 on WinXP, so if you would care to check it out, I'm sure that my conclusion that "projects in solutions folders" don't populate to the toolbox. So it has no relation to Vista. And I'm sure this is a bug.

Answer 9

OK :-)

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

--Chris

Answer 10

Hi Chris,

 

Thanks for the info! Saved me trawling the net for solutions. That actually fixed my problem! I had a project with several 3rd party controls using XP + VS2005 sp1. It locked up today and on reloading the entire windows layout had been reset back to the default settings. I think this is probably one of the causes of the AutoToolboxPopulate being set to false. The 3rd party controls had dissapeared from the toolbox! Deleted the cached versions did not make them reapear! Setting AutoPopulate to true did!

 

Cheers

 

Phil Lewin

Answer 11

Hi Josh,

I am experiencing a similar problem. All my vs2005 toolbox controls are missing now. I have tried "reset" (from toolbox),  "devenv /ResetSettings", "devenv /ResetSkipPkgs" but no one works. Un-install and re-install doesn't help either.  I have even tried to copy the files from "C:\Documents and Settings\YourName \Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0" from other computer, but that doesn't help either. Installation of SP1 doesn't solve the problem. Do you have any other suggestion?

I think it happens after I install/uninstall a 3rd party component (from ComponentOne), but I am not very sure.

Justin

Answer 12

Hi Justin,

 

A couple of questions:

 

1. If you right-click in the toolbox and select "Show All", do you see the missing controls (in a grayed-out disabled state), or are they still missing?
2. Are the controls for all designers (Winforms, ASPX, etc.) gone, or just one designer type?

 

Thanks!

-Josh

 

Answer 13

Hi Josh,

1. "Show all" shows all the missing controls, but grayed-out disabled.
2. The problem seems to happen only on my existing projects. I tried to create new winform project(vb) and ASPX(vb) and both work well (there are controls in the tool box). But when I open existing projects the toolbox is empty (unless I "show all").

Thanks.

Answer 14

1. What if you add a new winform or aspx page to one of the existing projects -- does the toolbox work OK with that one, or is it still empty?
2. If you take a copy of one of the existing projects and delete all the code you added (everything except the auto-generated code that was added by VS), does that solve the problem?
3. Were these projects upgraded from an earlier version of VS?

Thanks,

-Josh

 

Answer 15

Hi Josh,

1. I added a new aspx page and the toolbox works OK, but only with this new aspx page. Still empty when I switched to another page.
2. Well, this is weird. When I made a copy of the existing project (a web site) and opened it up, everything is just normal, I can see the tool box full of the controls.  I tried to open the source project again, but the tool box is still empty.
3. No. It's all developed on VS2005, and worked very well for quite a long time, until I tried to upgrade the 3rd party component I mentioned in previous email.

I think I can move on with the backup copy now. Thanks very much.

-Justin

Answer 16

I wonder if the original project has some hidden files that weren't copied when you duplicated it.  If you go to the original project directory and type "dir /s /ah", are there any results?  If so, were those files copied to the new project?  And if they weren't, can you try copying them to the new project to see if that causes the problem to start happening there as well?

 

Thanks!

-Josh

 

Answer 17

I have a similar problem. My Visual studio is stuck in a state where the toolbox only displays the "Data" item (with pointer, DataGridView, Binding Source and Binding Navigator), and #13119. If I select "show all" then all of the other components are shown greyed out. Even if I start a new C# project (Just a basic windows app) this is all that is selected.

I am running Visual Studio 2005 with SP 1 on XP.

Answer 18

Have you tried resetting the toolbox?  Does other winforms designer functionality work correctly?  (E.g. if you open an existing windows form, can you move the controls around, edit their properties, copy and paste them, etc.?)

 

Thanks,

-Josh

 

Answer 19

Hi Josh,

I did try resetting the toolbox, but this had no effect. I also tried to 'show all' but this displayed all controls except for the data controls as disabled. I created several new C# projects from scratch (just a basic windows form project), but it had no effect.

I did try editing an MFC project, and there the toolbox worked as expected.

I finally ended up deleting all of the files under C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0, and this fixed the problem.

The only unusual thing that I can remember doing to bring this on was starting a  C# ASP .Net Web Application, adding a couple of items to the form, just to try it out (a button and an edit box), and then running the project. I then shut it down (It might have frozen, I don't recall, so I may have shut it down via the task manager), and started a normal C# forms project, whereupon my toolbox didn't work. Resetting the toolbox, and resetting the computer had no effect.

I have visual assist and incredibuild, on visual studio 2005 SP1. It's common for me to be running 4 different Visual studio instances at the same time.

I hope this helps. I should have kept the old toolbox files, but unfortunately I didn't

Cheers
Ben

Answer 20

 

For me the solution was to delete the four files. But they were one folder up:

C:\Documents and Settings\MYUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0

Named:

toolbox*.tbd

 

Answer 21

I had the same problem under Vista Business 32bit (up to date but no SP) with Visual Studio 2005.

Deleting the toolbox*.tbd files under
C:\Users\MYUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0
worked perfect.

Answer 22

 

Thanks Chris... I was having issues with my report (rdlc) controls, I thought the problem was exclusive to those. I also had the #13119 tab, however. Spent a good deal of time banging my head against the wall, uninstalling and reinstalling VS (apparently, the cache stays within the folder, so a reinstall doesn't do anything).

 

Deleted the cache files like you mentioned and everything works now. in VS 2008, the files are located directly in the VS 9.0 folder:

 

C:\Documents and Settings\MYUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0

 

Thanks again.

Answer 23

 

For me the solution was to delete the four files. But they were one folder up:

C:\Documents and Settings\MYUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0

Named:

toolbox*.tbd

Second (third? fourth?) that. Extremly annoying to lose your toolbox items like that. Can't say what caused it though.

Answer 24

This must be old now but I agree with DBrunebjerg  that posted his comment on April 10, 2007.

I've been working with VS 2005 since 2.5 years ago and I ran with the same problem just this week.  I tried all solutions found in the net for this problem: "Resetting toolbox", "Options> WindowsFormDesigner> AutoToolboxPopulate","deleting the hidden files from some folder in Application Data folder", etc. but nothing worked.

Finally I came back to this same post looking for the answer and I read again all answers, and realize that the solution posted by this person I did not try.

Well, I did what he mentioned and it worked without doing anything else.  Agree that there is some sort of a bug.

To all of you that have lost the controls in toolbox in visual studio 2005, or have missing controls in toolbox in VS 2005 do not waste time reinstalling VS or deleting files.  Just close your solution file and open it again and will work. 

I use Windows XP with SP2, and VS2005 with SP1

Regards.

Answer 25

+ 1 for deleteing the 4 files located at:

C:\Documents and Settings\MYUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0

My System:
  Running Visual Studio 2008 SP1
  WinXP latest Service Pack

Had the same symptoms ans many here.  Tool bar lost most of its items except a tab called 13119.  Reset Toolbox did not help (by its self).  Show all showed all the components but they were grayed out.

Deleting the 4 tool bar files and then Clicking Reset Tool Box fixed it.  (It took a while to reset the tool box.)

Vaccano

Answer 26

Vaccanoll .. I've tryed but it doesn't work for me
only HTML tab is showing the icons all other components are disabled / greyed out

I have XP SP3
VS 2005

Regrds;

---

MjkSoft

Answer 27

Deleting the files in C:\Users\<MyUserName>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 worked like a charm for VS2008 SP1 on Windows 7 Beta.

Had issues with the #13119 tab and the DSL toolbox not showing up. Just had to rebuild the toolbox, which took about 2 minutes and now everything works perfectly again!

Answer 28

This worked like a charm for me for VS2008 TD SP1 on XP SP3.
I associated the loss of the toolbox icons with the installation of an SDK that said it was updating the VS2005 and VS2008 controls.  VS2005 was OK, but VS2008 had no controls in the toolbox.  Closing the IDE, deleting the hidden toolbox files at  
C:\Documents and Settings\MYUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0
and restarting fixed the problem.  It took almost 2 minutes for the IDE to start up, but the controls were there after startup.

THANKS Chris !!!

Answer 29

I received this error in VS 2008 through adding a Reporting project to an existing solution.  I was able to resolve using the reset toolbox option recommened here and closing / opening the solution.  Thanks!

Answer 30

Mine is already set to True. NEXT

---

J. Thomas Crenshaw [e-mail]

Answer 31

I had the same isue just now. A combination of reset and close open did the trick for me.

Answer 32

I have the same problem

I have uninstalled / reinstalled.

devenv /resetsettings

reset the toolbox

deleted the toolbox files
deleted the hidden tool box files

I still have greyed out tool box items for the Mobile application

HELP ME

Answer 33

Yep... mine is set to True... doesn't help my toolbox at all

Answer 34

Josh.

I have tried everything on this thread and nothing is working...

My toolbox is still greyed out.

Answer 35

Tried that ... it did not work for me :-(

Too good to be true

Answer 36

Hello,

Thanks. My issue was similar. The Toolbox items disappeared and then when I selected show all, the items appeared "greyed" out.

I deleted the 4 files located at:

C:\Documents and Settings\MYUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0

My System:

Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Windows Server 2003 SP 2
SQL Server 2008

I had already closed the MS Visual Studio 2008 before deleting the 4 files. I opened MS VS2008 and then opened an existing project with the problems mentioned above and the toolbox items appeared.

Thanks again.

r,
Clem

Answer 37

Hello,

Thanks. My issue was similar. The Toolbox items disappeared and then when I selected show all, the items appeared "greyed" out.

I deleted the 4 files located at:

C:\Documents and Settings\MYUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0

My System:

Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Windows Server 2003 SP 2
SQL Server 2008

I had already closed the MS Visual Studio 2008 before deleting the 4 files. I opened MS VS2008 and then opened an existing project with the problems mentioned above and the toolbox items appeared.

Thanks again.

r,
Clem