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Toolbox Missing Controls

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Sunday, March 4, 2007 4:44 AM | 2 votes

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?

All replies (62)

Monday, March 5, 2007 11:35 PM | 6 votes

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

Pablo

Tuesday, March 6, 2007 1:46 PM | 1 vote

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.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007 8:57 PM

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

 

Wednesday, March 7, 2007 4:36 AM

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.

Friday, March 23, 2007 4:39 PM

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

Tuesday, April 10, 2007 1:42 PM | 2 votes

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.

 

 

Monday, April 30, 2007 6:51 PM | 8 votes

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

Monday, April 30, 2007 10:15 PM

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.

Monday, April 30, 2007 11:40 PM

OK :-)

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

--Chris

Friday, May 11, 2007 9:35 PM

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

Tuesday, June 26, 2007 10:46 AM

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

Tuesday, June 26, 2007 5:30 PM | 1 vote

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

 

Wednesday, June 27, 2007 2:25 AM

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.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007 5:40 PM

  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

 

Thursday, June 28, 2007 2:31 AM

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

Thursday, June 28, 2007 5:02 PM

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

 

Friday, August 31, 2007 8:06 AM

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.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007 10:58 PM

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

 

Wednesday, September 5, 2007 11:38 PM

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

Wednesday, December 5, 2007 11:55 PM | 1 vote

 

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

 

Wednesday, January 16, 2008 8:00 AM

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.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 8:46 PM | 2 votes

 

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.

Friday, May 9, 2008 2:22 PM | 1 vote

 

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.

Monday, September 22, 2008 9:18 PM

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.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008 6:06 PM | 1 vote

+ 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

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 8:27 AM

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

Saturday, March 28, 2009 8:11 PM

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!

Thursday, May 7, 2009 3:00 PM

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 !!!

Monday, June 8, 2009 7:06 PM

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!

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 8:50 AM

Mine is already set to True. NEXTJ. Thomas Crenshaw [email protected]

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 2:57 PM

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

Sunday, November 22, 2009 4:00 AM

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

Monday, November 23, 2009 7:07 PM

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

Monday, November 23, 2009 7:08 PM

Josh.

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

My toolbox is still greyed out.

Monday, November 23, 2009 7:09 PM

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

Too good to be true

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 6:04 PM

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

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 6:08 PM

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

Saturday, November 28, 2009 3:25 PM

On my system the tab #13119 appears after installing some products that modify Toolbox, ej. XtraEditors from DevExpress and the KriptonComponentTookit from ComponentFactory, uninstalling these componentes does not solve this problem, reseting the toolbox works for me.

Friday, January 1, 2010 12:09 PM

I had the same problem, my solution was to delete ALL toolbox files on my system. It was not enough to delete just the ones recommended here. Do a search in your file system, remember to include hidden files.

Then I opened up a new web project, saw the "Initializing toolbox" text in the statusbar for a while and then I closed and reopened my original project and it worked.

Ray

Sunday, February 7, 2010 7:49 AM

Hi,

I also try to solve “grayed out” controls in toolbox problem, but neither of the proposed solution didn't helped. Then I found out, that VS alone was once changed it's target.NET framework. (may be during some installation of new controls, I don't know). So, If your target framework version (could be set in Project/Properties/Compile/Advanced Compile Options) is lower that that of used controls, they will be inactive (grayed). I have simply choose .NET framework 3.5 in the Advanced Compile Options and after new start up of VS, all controls was enabled. If you don't have NET framework 3.5 SP1 yet, you could install it from MS web page.

Best regards

Thursday, February 18, 2010 9:05 AM

Deleting the four Toolbox.tlb files worked for me.

Saturday, May 15, 2010 5:57 AM

You sir are brilliant! Solved my issue. Cheers!

Monday, May 17, 2010 7:23 PM

I'm running VS2008 on XP, with my webs on a remote share 2003 server (so my development webs are backed up as well as the production).  I was having trouble getting VS to acknowlege ajax tools via remote share, so on the remote server, I did the .net framework 2 configuration, my machine, full trust change.  Fabulous everything worked great, could drag and drop items from the toolbox and they were recognized.  This was Friday.

Came in today, Monday. No tools in toolbox - takes forever to initialize, then gives #13119 error.  Tried renaming, moving the .tdb files, nada.  Tried turning AutoToolboxPopulate option on/off to see if it would reset, nada.  Uninstalled and reinstalled VS2008 SP1 (after using the KB removal tool), nada.

Anybody?  Can't really use VS2008 right now.  jb

Tuesday, June 1, 2010 9:31 AM

thanks i had same issue.....and now i can able to use toolbox in my vs2008...thanks again..

Sunday, July 11, 2010 4:29 PM

This solution okay for my... Visual Studio 2008; Tks

Friday, September 17, 2010 6:47 PM

Vaccano, this worked for me, thank you! Alex_bg

Thursday, November 25, 2010 4:34 AM

Very Simple

I too have the same problem (in VS 2010 professional Trial Version) .

I never deleted or created any folders or anything for this problem.

The user controls reappear if we run the Project Rebuild option.

 

 

Ramanathan

Wednesday, December 1, 2010 11:17 PM

Clem:

Thank you very much!

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

There, I created a temp folder and moved in it the 4 toolbox*.tbd files into a temp folder.

Then I restarted visual and not only did it reset my toolbox with long missing custom items this also solved a problem of random crashes when opening xaml ui files in wpf projects.

Lovely, great, wonderful, I am overjoyed.

Thanks for making my day!

Pasx

Wednesday, January 5, 2011 2:42 PM

For anyone coming to this page for issues with VS 2010, try removing any spaces from the Assembly name.

Sunday, January 23, 2011 11:44 AM

For me nothing help (reset toolvox, remove *.tbd files, devenv / xxx)

The only one solution was uninstall ALL Compact frameworks (2.0, 3.5) => check if C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\SDK\CompactFramework empty=> install CF 2.0, install CF 2.0 SP2, install CF 3.5

Saturday, February 12, 2011 2:01 AM

Go to ...

Tools>

Import and export settings…> Import selected environment settings > No, just import new setting, overwriting my current settings

> My settings > CurrentSettings.vssettings.

Uncheck all by clicking on the “All settings” box, then under “General settings”, check the box left of Toolbox and click Finish.

That will fix all you icons!

source: http://rikardalard.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/missing-icons-in-visual-studio-2005-toolbox/

 

 

Thursday, March 31, 2011 1:25 PM

Thanks Chris!

I didn't have to delete any files but I did find the option just as described. 

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Version 3.5 SP1.

Gregg

Cowardice: the failure to try in the face of adversity

Tuesday, July 19, 2011 1:48 AM

Could it be perhaps that when you're looking in your toolbox that you're in a tab for coding only? Try switching to a tab that's for design..

Monday, October 3, 2011 9:28 PM

Hi,

I am as well facing the same issue with VS2008:

I have created a project which references a third-party dll containing custom controls. I can see them in my toolbox, between my own project-created components and the "All Windows Form" section.

When we commit then checkout this project from CVS on another computer with VS2008, I would expect the controls to be visible as well inside the toolbox. (I think the issue comes from a configuration of the 2d computer's VS, as everything works fine on the first one and I don't see CVS messing with it).

When I go on object browser and list the objects in my third-party dll, I can see those custom controls; but when I go on Tools>Choose Custom Controls, I can't even see them.

I've tried all solutions discussed here, but none worked. It is just as if the dll was not detected by Visual Studio. However when looking at my (already created) objects in the designer they appear fine, everything build, etc...

Any thoughts?

 

Thanks,

M.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012 9:45 PM

I erased the four hidden files as suggested earlier in the posts...I'm on windows 7 running VS 2008. The path to where the files are is here in my case: C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0

hope this helps!

Wednesday, April 11, 2012 6:58 AM

Gr8, it worked

Wednesday, June 6, 2012 7:19 PM

THANK YOU!!!!!! :-)

Friday, December 28, 2012 5:29 PM

Re: right-click, "Show All"

This did it for me! I had added a tab labeled 'AJAX Control Toolkit', did a 'Choose Items' on it (loaded the AjaxControlToolkit.dll) and the tab would promptly disappear which caused me to have a WTF moment. So I tried it again only to get a message stating that 'AJAX Control Toolkit' already exists. Now, I realize that yes, it exists, but it became hidden. Thanks for the screwball behavior Microsoft. :-)

Sunday, October 4, 2015 11:33 AM

Sunday, October 4, 2015 11:34 AM

Tuesday, November 10, 2015 2:40 PM

I have stumbled into a similar problem.  I am using the free (I know) version of VS 2015 and am currently rewriting my VB6.0 programs as well as the C++ programs into the new .net.  One of the problems I now face with a VB project is that I can not seem to find GridView in the toolbox on the left.  I see DataGridView but not GridView.  I have reset the Toolbox and double-checked that the .net framework had the check in the box next to the GridView in the choose toolbox items.

Please help because I need to get away from MSFlexGrid (too many problems with it when it comes to large number of rows).

Lance...

Thursday, February 25, 2016 7:33 AM

Thank you, it helped me