Issues with intellisense, references, and builds in Visual Studio 2008

Question

Hoping you can help me -- the strangest thing seems to have happened with my VS install.

System config: Windows 7 Pro x64, Visual Studio 2008 SP1, C#, ASP.NET 3.5.

I have two web site projects in a solution. I am referencing NUnit / NHibernate (did this by right-clicking on the project and selecting "Add Reference". I've done this for several projects in the past).

Things were working fine but recently stopped working and I can't figure out why. Intellisense completely disappears for any files in my App_Code directory, and none of the references are recognized (they are recognized by any file in the root directory of the web site project.

Additionally, pretty simple commands like the following (in Page_Load) fail (assume TextBox1 is definitely an element on the page):

if (Page.IsPostBack)
{
str test1;
test1 = TextBox1.Text;
}

It says that all the page elements are null or that it can't access them.

At first I thought it was me, but due to the combination of issues, it seems to be Visual Studio itself.

I've tried clearing the temp directories & rebuilding the solution. I've also tried tools --> options --> text editor settings to ensure intellisense is turned on.

I'd appreciate any help you can give!

Answer 1

If you think it is VS then try running it with this command line to get it back to factory defaults: devenv /resetsettings

Alternatively you may be experiencing issues due to the fact that intellisense only works on code that is (pre)compiled check the following:

1. a required folder is marked as excluded,
2. there is an issue compiling a referenced project.
3. compile error in the global.asax class. Note: extra { or } in a class bubbles from the root folder, usually kills intellisense. (Clean solution then build watch output for error's)