"The path is not of a legal form." by PaulBowden

Thank you for submitting this issue. I'm passing it to the feature team to investigate and get back to you.

-Shamez

Thanks for reporting this issue, for some reason I am not able to reproduce the problem with the steps provided. If you have any additional information and/or project files that could help me repro it would be much appreciated.

Thank you,
Vivek, VS2005 Product Team.

Thanks for your bug report!

We have reviewed your bug and have been unable to reproduce the problem. We are closing the bug, but if in the future, with a later build, you can reliably reproduce the issue please let us know. Thanks for using Visual Studio!

Sincerely,
-VS Core Project/Soln QA

This bug lives! This was reported again through ladybug under a different bug ID. We're bringing this puppy back so we can dig into it some more.

This bug lives! This was reported again through ladybug under a different bug ID. We're bringing this puppy back so we can dig into it some more.

For those watching the sordid tale of this bug through MSDN Feedback, we have come up with a concrete repro internally and have moved the bug over to the appropriate team to get it fixed. Woohoo!

Neil

The Microsoft Sub-status is now "Working on solution"

The Microsoft Sub-status is now "Working on solution"

The Microsoft Sub-status is now "Working on solution"

This error happens because a reference cannot be resolved in your project. When the designer loads, it attempts to locate and load every assembly that is in your reference list. In C#, you can expand the reference list to see this. In VB, you must click the "Show All Files" button in the solution explorer window to view the references collection. Try to remove and readd any custom references and then reload the designer.

Our fix here, if anything, would be to make the error more clear than it is now -- and possibly try to avoid the error if you don't use a type that comes from the bad reference. Unfortunately, this type of change does not meet our bar at this stage, so we will not be changing behavior with respect to this bug.

I checked the References (Folder) in the project (C#) an found dead references which has been marked with a yellow exclamation mark. After removing them, I could open the Form in the designer without an error. The reference was once used but was not required any more due to project improvements (referenced library did not exist any more) and my colleagues did forget to remove the reference entry from the References folder.
A better hint for that error would be very helpfull.

I would like to defer from the comment from microsoft. This is a microsoft BUG. The references are found and forms are loaded properly one day and the next day it doesn't and the next day it does. it is Intermittent. I believe microsoft needs to handle the old .dlls and .ocxs in a more stable manner before claiming, that they are compatible.

Related issues, when I try to rebuild project referring to old components, it generates errors and warning, then I try to build and those errors goes away, this should not happen.

Microsoft is not open source but more and more it is behaving like one. I think you need to show lot more initiative in resolving issues we face everyday.

Google "The path is not of a legal form.", see all the hits you get. do you think all those people are loosing their references for nothing.

Please reconsider fixing the bug. I will help you with everything you need.

Agreed. That Microsoft should take responsibility for this issue. At the very least a KB article of the suggested workarounds would be very helpful. The IDE is STILL corrupting the references, or the files themselves.

Thank you,

Uninstall en re-install Framework Beta 2

What you can try is uninstalling the framework Beta 2 en re-install it again. It worked for me. Hopefully it works for you guys to.

It’s happened with me I guess that I changed or corrupt the .targets file’s so to solve this issue I copied the these files from another machine to my machine

Got to C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50215 or the relative path in other machine copy al “.targets” files and replace you local version with new one.

This problem only happens in my inherited user controls. It intermittently happens after building my project. The opened user control gets refreshed an boom The path is not of a legal form."

I was able to solve this issue by either

1)    Close all open tabs in Visual studio. Change some project options. Build project. Undo project option changes. Build the project again.
2)    Previous solution did not work for me one time. I usually save the whole project every day into a different folder. As a second workaround I copied the .sln, .suo, .vbproj and .vbproj.user from the old folder to the current one.

This happens to me every day! I have custom user controls and references to my own framework libs (a big project). This happens in my Windows Forms project. It happens alot with forms with a lot of controls on it. Currently I use the devcomponents tab control and on each tab I have a set of textboxes and conbo boxes. The problem only seems to show itself on this form, and I am thinking that it is because of the large amount of controls on it.

1. Close all of the open tabs in VS2K5
2. Close the IDE
3. Launch IDE
4. Open Project
5. Build Clean
6. Rebuild
7. Try opening offending WinForm using either the button at the top of the solution window, or right click file and choose view designer. For some reason I seem to have more luck doing these than double-clicking the form.

I know it's a pain to reload the IDE, but it really seems to help (and even then it doesnt help all of the time).

Another alternative is to keep closing the form, build the project the form is in, and open the designer again. If you keep doing it, it seems to come back. If this doesnt work, try the above (or one of the other workarounds posted).

-Jeff

When I open a form or a user control in a designer, about 50% of the time i get this silly message. I can get it to go away reliably.

1) close the offending form or user control
2) open it's associated resx file by double clicking in the solution explorer.
3) Reopen the offending control. should be fixed.

I checked the References (Folder) in the project (C#) an found dead references which has been marked with a yellow exclamation mark. After removing them, I could open the Form in the designer without an error. The reference was once used but was not required any more due to project improvements (referenced library did not exist any more) and my colleagues did forget to remove the reference entry from the References folder.
A better hint for that error would be very helpfull.

PaulBowden's opening resx is the best solution so far.

Wipe your local copy and re-get the files from Source Control.

wow, a long time ago since the last time some one had problems with this,
well, a simple fix was coping working DLLs from other machine to the \bin directory.

bpanic, not really this bug has been annoying me for 3 months now, and I'm about to kill myself. I keep reopening, rebuilding, cleaning just whatever and 1 out of 10 times I finally see my form. This keeps coming back , all my references are correct. Indeed it is a form with a whole lot of controls on it and custom stuff. But still if it can open it at one time, why shouldn't it be able to open it 10 seconds before. It's horrible and really needs to get fixed!