views:

726

answers:

7

I just installed 'Visual C# 2008 Express Edition' and 'Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition' on my Vista machine. Previously I have been running these in Win XP. When launching the software, starting a new project and trying to build it I get warnings like "The referenced component 'System' could not be found."; one row for each namespace used. I have .NET Framework 3.5 installed and are able to browse through the tabs in 'Add reference', but I cannot make it work. (A re-install did not help.) Is there an easy fix?

A: 

Ae you running it as Administrator? (Right click context menu in the exe)

Thomas Wagner
A: 

Are you launching via "Run As Administrator"? It's possible the permissions on your .Net framework directories aren't what they should be.

Nick Craver
A: 

No, admin privileges did not help. Among the "The referenced component..." warnings I also (in Visual C#) get "The designer could not be shown for this file because none of the classes within it can be designed." and "The "Microsoft.Build.Tasks.Windows.GetWinFXPath" task could not be loaded from the assembly PresentationBuildTasks, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35. ..."

matpe
A: 

Do you have any patches or updates that there may be for that software? The other thought would be to copy the System.dll into the bin folder of the project which is what I used to do in previous projects to get things working.

JB King
A: 

Well, I have now tried to uninstall all VS Express components and then install Web Developer again. Nothing. It did not help. Maybe I have to reinstall vista and start all over again. Perhaps I made some mistake on the way.

matpe
+1  A: 

Problem solved. I used the most radical solution I could come up with - a clean Vista install. Somehow reinstalling Visual Studio does not include all essential steps. First time the software is launched it configures itself. Something must have gone wrong the first time and when the procedure was done again it tried to use to "broken" configuration. Well, now it is fixed.

matpe
A: 

I really didn't want to follow the accepted answer and do a clean install. A better solution I got from the MSDN forums:

Go to Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows Features on or off...

Then enable everything under Microsoft .Net Framework 3.0

Neil N