A developer on the team here has run into an issue today where the Windows Forms designer in VS2008 has broken. They have tried restarting, reinstalling, uninstall+install without any luck to fix it. It happens with any project including a fresh WinForms app from the template. They are running VS2008 SP1 on XP.

This is the error message that VS displays on its fancy looking error screen:

"The designer loader did not supply a type resolution service, which is a requirement for CodeDom serialization.
at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomDesignerLoader.Initialize()
at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.VSCodeDomDesignerLoader.Initialize()
at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.BasicDesignerLoader.BeginLoad(IDesignerLoaderHost host)
at System.ComponentModel.Design.DesignerHost.BeginLoad(DesignerLoader loader)"

The next step will be to repair the .NET FX 3.5 to see if it will fix it. After trying that we'll export chunks of VS keys from the registry and compare it to a working machine. If neither work then we are only left with doing an OS reinstall.

Any suggestions are very much welcomed.

Thanks, Jono

Hi Jonathon Rossi,

How's the problem after you repair .NET FX3.5? It seems the problem is on designer since it doesn't supply the type resloution service which is used to load types at design time.

When the Visual Studio 2008SP1 is uninstalled, did you try to clean the registry? This may rely on some tools.


Best regards,
Bruce Zhou

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Hi Bruce,

Repairing .NET 3.5 didn't fix the problem. We also couldn't really see what was different between two computers (working and broken).

What do you mean by "clean the registry"?

Do you think having VS2005 and VS2008 installed on the same machine could be causing this? I just thought of this right now, I don't think we tried uninstalling both versions.

Thanks, Jono

Hi Jonathon,

I am not sure if you successfully uninstalled Visual Studio 2008. So if not, you can check out if there are any Visual Studio 2008 related registry entries remained in the registry, and kick them out. (This is what "clean the registry mean")

Commonly, I don't think Visual Studion 2005 will influence Visual Studio 2008. Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 coexists in my machine for a long time.

But it's hard to say if they will influence each other on occation. You can have a try in order to narrow down the problem. Once you uninstalled Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008, I suggest you install Visual Studio 2008 in a new Directory.

I am waiting to see the result.

Best regards,
Bruce Zhou

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Thanks for your prompt reply.

Is it worth uninstalling SQL Server Management Studio since it is based on the VS core?

I don't think SQL Server Management Studio matters much. You can first try to Uninstall Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 first.

You can also refer to the FAQ in Visual Studio Setup forumwhen you are uninstalling Visual Studio.

Best regards,
Bruce Zhou

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