Visual Studio 2015 Toolbox empty after update

[etienne_marais]

I clicked on the notifications area and there were 4 available updates for Visual Studio 2015, I installed update KB3165756
which is Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 (described here)

After installing the update my toolbox was empty (existing project). I clicked on choose items in the toolbox and tried to add controls to the toolbox. Nothing happened. I closed and reopened VS and reset the toolbox and tried to add controls via choose items again. I created a new tab in the toolbox and tried again. Rebooted and tried again. I repeated this a couple of times and some of the times (following the same procedure) I got a screen which says:

" The following controls were successfully added to the toolbox but were not enabled in the active designer. "
<list of controls>
" Make sure the controls to add are compatible with the current designer and .NET framework version. "

I then made sure I only chose standard controls shipped with VS, no luck.

I also tried different projects and setting the target .NET version of the project (including 4.5.2), no luck.

THEN I created a new project, the toolbox was populated by default and I added a tab to which I added third party controls with success. The target (by default) of the new project is .NET framework 4.5.2

After I changed the target of this new project to .NET framework to 3.5 the controls disappeared and I could not add them again (VS shipped controls only)

Some of the solutions have many projects in them, most are legacy that target .NET framework 2 or 3.5

Can anybody think of a solution ?

Anybody had bad luck (or otherwise, especially with legacy projects) with VS after Update 3 ?

 

[skimread]

I don't think it is legacy related. Rather a setting is messed up

Have you tried what is posted on stackoverflow?

Right click on the toolbox and select Reset toolbox.

or

Delete the tbd files in C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0

 

[etienne_marais]

Thanks man, I have tried Reset toolbox many times (before) but had high hopes with deleting the tbd files as you suggested which did not work . I am strongly considering just uninstalling and reinstalling VS.

 

[skimread]

Thanks man, I have tried Reset toolbox many times (before) but had high hopes with deleting the tbd files as you suggested which did not work . I am strongly considering just uninstalling and reinstalling VS.

There is some registry stuff you also have to delete

1. Close Visual Studio;

2. Open the “c:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0” folder and remove all the .TBD files;

3. Start regedit;

4. Find the “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\ToolboxControlsInstaller_AssemblyFoldersExCache” and “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\ToolboxControlsInstallerCache” keys;

5. Remove these keys with their sub-keys.

6. Run Visual Studio again and wait until it recreates all items in the toolbox.

Otherwise I would uninstall and install again in case a dll got fooked somehow

 

[etienne_marais]

ok, tried the registry thing and after that did not work re-installing and I STILL have the damn issue.

I did however find this from a person who had similar problems:

Thanks again for replying. Today I have had a 'Eureka' moment! ... And I've probably discovered the cause of my problem - directory permissions! There were two groups of users missing in the permissions - 'Authenticated Users' and 'PC-Name\Users'. My own login account, along with another account that I have access to were in the user list, so for most operations - editing, building, source control - there was no problem. But the toolbox? That had big problems! I have a suspicion that the toolbox is dependent on Silverlight in some way (the exception that was thrown indicated that 'Web' components are involved), and perhaps this is why these two accounts are required in the list. When my PC was updated I copied a root directory from my old hard drive to a new one ... preserving the incorrect (for Visual Studio) permissions.

Does anybody have an idea to which directories he is referring to so that I can check if that may be the problem ?

 

[Ho3n3r]

Right click inside Toolbox -> Show All?