Sunday, August 22, 2010 8:53 PM
I blogged last month about an unsolved mystery I was experiencing, which I dubbed the Mystery of the Uncooperative EF Model and the Missing Target Frameworks. Since then, I’ve since expanded that to include the Mystery of why VS.NET 2010 can’t seem to resolve where my .NET 3.5 assemblies reside. Because of all this, let’s just go with the title of this blog, or as it’ll be known in its European release: HOOPED – a boy and his VS.NET installation.
Without getting too wordy, let me give you the recent string of events because it makes even less sense now than to go and describe *everything* in detail. Here’s what I did today:
- Reinstalled Windows 7 64 bit, wiping out my previous install.
- Installed system drivers (motherboard, video card, etc.)
- Installed all available Windows updates.
- Installed VS.NET 2008.
- Installed VS.NET 2008 SP1
At this point, I verified that I could create a .NET 3.5 web project application in 2008. All good. Restarted the machine (*note – multiple re-starts throughout the above process too).
- Installed VS.NET 2010, Full Install (even the C++ stuff that I’ll never touch)
- Checked Windows Update, installed only one: .NET 4 Client Framework
- Restarted
At this point, all should be well. However, when I create a web application project targeting .NET 3.5, this is what I get:
What this does is clobber my designer. If I put this in the default.aspx page…
…the designer won’t recognize the ASP.NET control. In fact, I had to hand-type that as the toolbox wouldn’t let me drag/drop into the designer or into the markup view. If I switch to the designer view, I get this:
But I can still run the page and the textbox will actually appear, so issues.
Huh.
Another oddity (which may/may not be related and may/may not be anything) is that under the properties page of the project I have no frameworks listed.
Ok, so if this wasn’t enough (and Lord knows it is), the original issue I had still exists: If I create a .NET 4.0 project, let’s say a Winform project, and try to add an EF model to the project, I get this:
HOW?! How can you not resolve the .NETFramework 4 when its a .NET 4.0 project to start with?! DOES NOT COMPUTE!
I have been emailing with some guys from the Visual Studio team and they’ve been great at giving me some suggestions on things to look at, but I think this is perplexing them as much as it is me.
Others have told me they had no issue installing vs.net 2010 on Win 7 64 bit, so I have no idea what is different in my setup, especially since this last attempt to install was entirely from scratch.
Thoughts? Suggestions? HELP?!
D