Recently my VB.Net project failed while building, raising a dialog that said (approximately):
External Tool: VbMyResourcesResXFileCodeGenerator failed due to a System.OutOfMemoryException
I'm posting this question and answer as a public service for future searchers with the same problem - in particular because it wasn't easy to figure out.
Searching for a clue to resolve the issue lead me to this question: Visual Studio 2010 - (OutOfMemoryException) & (Memory increase in Ideal State) - and a suggestion to try the Solution Load Manager to reduce memory use. With only the failing project loaded, immediately after starting VS2010, I could successfully execute 'run custom tool' on the resx file from the solution explorer context menu and then build the application.
However, shortly afterwards the build began to silently fail, much like this poster's situation: Visual studio 2010 IDE build fails mysteriously with no errors or warnings In the comments to his question I found my salvation:
You will have to go to Visual Studio Options dialog and navigate to Projects and Solutions | Build and Run. Change MSBuild project build output verbosity to Detailed or Diagnostic and then analyze the output. That should give you hint on what is the root cause.
Once I did so, I was able to see that, again, the resource.resx file couldn't be built.
The ultimate issue turned out to be a forgotten file resource. I had previously embedded a file as a resource, and subsequently increased that file's size significantly by adding several screenshots. Although I was no longer using the file in my code, I hadn't deleted it as a project resource. It was the size of this file that eventually caused the System.OutOfMemoryException and build failures I was seeing. Once I removed the file from the resources, the solution could be built as expected.
Related
Since Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8 we have on some computers in my team the following really weird build error.
Additionally Visual Studio recognizes it
but the IDE itself doesn't crash.
To check if it only happens to our own solutions I created a new simple, plain command line tool project which shows the same build behavior. So it isn't exclusive to our solutions.
I tried to get help from Microsoft but it seems they don't know what to do about it. The thread doesn't show all the material I provided to them. They got a lot of logs and a sample project from me. A crash dump wasn't possible to provide, because Visual Studio itself doesn't crash.
Repair and full uninstall, new install of Visual Studio didn't help either.
Edit: It is not only occurring on my development machine but on our build servers (there are two of them), too. Interestingly our VMs on the development machines does not seem to have this issue.
To me it seems, the problem has something to do with loading assembly from GAC, so I would suggest to try reinstalling Microsoft.CodeAnalysis assembly and see if it helps.
To Do that:
Install Microsoft.CodeAnalysis package to your project with it's required dependencies, make sure to note down all assemblies being downloaded.
Run Visual Studio Developer Command prompt as an Admin
Uninstall existing assemblies from GAC by using command gacutil /u [name of assembly] (do this for all assemblies from step 1)
Install newly downloaded dll using command gacutil /u [Path to Dll] for all dlls (do this for all assemblies from step 1)
Remove package from your project
I hope this helps!
Unfortunately in this case you have only three two options:
You could try to describe all the steps to reproduce this crash so much detailed as you could with a lot of screenshot images from this steps. Use for this DOC file format, PDF or some like that. This file you have to send to Visual Studio support.
You could try to create the crash dump. Each time Visual Studio crashes, it will create a dump file devenv.exe.[number].dmp file in the configured location. Each dump file produced by this method will be up to 4 GB. in size. Make sure to set DumpFolder to a location with adequate drive space or adjust the DumpCount appropriately. I know, you wrote already on MS forum that this error doesn't create one dump. But would you like to imagine that you have 10 crashes on a day and on each crash one dump file in size 4 GB. will be written? The dump creating is disabled normaly and you have to enable it. How to enable it you could find using search string in Google: "How to enable dump files in Windows" or for Windows 10 you could see this video. Alternatively or additionally you could use the programm tool "ADPlus" for creating memory dump files and log files with debug output from one or more processes. This tool is very detailed describen on this MS Support page.
You could try to debug by yourself. But in the case if you want do it you have to see "Tools listing Included in Debugging Tools for Windows".
Normaly by Visual Studio support do not work the Visual Studio developers. You have to be nice to them and they do what they can do. You could not expect from them that they all know. They do their job using some given instructions.
In your case the support worker has gived you the link Reporting Visual Studio crashes and performance issues in which you have to read the following part:
Directly reproducible crashes
Directly reproducible crashes are cases which have all of the
following characteristics:
Can be observed by following a known set of steps
Can be observed on multiple computers (if available)
If the steps involve opening a project or document, can be reproduced in sample code or a project which can be linked to or
provided as part of the feedback
For these issues, follow the steps in "How to Report a Problem"
and be sure to include:
The steps to reproduce the problem
A standalone repro project as described above. If this is not possible, then please include:
The language of the open projects (C#, C++, etc.)
The kind of project (Console Application, ASP.NET, etc.)
Any extensions that are installed.
Most valuable feedback: For this case, the most valuable feedback is the set of steps to reproduce the issue along with sample source
code.
Unknown crashes
If you're not sure what's causing your crashes or they seem random,
then you can capture dumps locally each time Visual Studio crashes and
attach those to separate feedback items. To save dumps locally when
Visual Studio crashes, set the following registry entries:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\devenv.exe]
"DumpFolder"="C:\\Crashdumps"
"DumpCount"=dword:00000005
"DumpType"=dword:00000002
⚠️ Each dump file produced by this method will be up to 4 GB. in size. Make sure to set DumpFolder to a location with adequate
drive space or adjust the DumpCount appropriately.
Each time Visual Studio crashes, it will create a dump file
devenv.exe.[number].dmp file in the configured location.
Then, use Visual Studio's "Report a Problem..." feature. It will
allow you to attach the appropriate dump.
Locate the dump file for the crash you are reporting (look for a file with the correct Creation time)
If possible, zip the file (*.zip) to reduce its size before submitting feedback
Follow the steps in "How to Report a Problem", and attach the heap dump to a new feedback item.
⚠️ Do not attach heap dumps to existing feedback items. Please create a new feedback item for each heap dump you would like to
submit. If you were requested to provide a heap dump in order to
resolve a previous feedback item, simply reply to the request with a
link to the new feedback item where the heap dump is attached.
Most valuable feedback: For this case, the most valuable feedback is the heap dump captured at the time of the crash.
Please read it very carefully and in best case two or even tree times successively.
I hope it will help you and I wish you good luck!
As suggested with Dipen in another answer problem seems to be in Microsoft.CodeAnalysis try reinstalling nuget package for that & re-register in GAC if missing.
If Issue still exists, you can try disabling code analysis on your project like:
In Project in VS 2017, open References & right click on Analyzers and click on Open Active Rule Set like:
Uncheck all rules so that no code analysis is done on your project like:
3 .Save All files and now try rebuilding & run the project to see if issue is resolved.
The issue was an older JustMock version installed. Could only solve it with the help of the Roslyn team.
Compilation Error
Description: An error occurred during the compilation of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific error details and modify your source code appropriately.
Compiler Error Message: The compiler failed with error code -2146232576.
Clean and Rebuild your solution (under Build menu). If it gives you any compilation errors, correct them and build it again. That worked for me.
Edit 3/12/18
It seems like you have read, or possibly write, locks on one or more files. Close the studio and verify that the source code repository don't have orphaned read/write locks. Also verify that any directories used for compilations don't have read locks. There used to be a weird Temporary ASP.NET-folder that was prone to locking files in the good old days.
Previous response
These are a few things that come to mind in my experience. I am assuming the deployment machine is a Windows Server of sorts.
Check the expected .NET version by checking project properties in Visual Studio (or the Project-files if another editor is used).
Compare with the installed version of .NET of the deployment machine. Framework on the deployment machine should equal to or greater than .
Verify the chosen app pool is running the expected version (or change it) and recycle it.
Make sure all the necessary assembly files (.DLLs) have been included on the deployment machine. A quick look into the BIN or DEBUG folder usually tells the story, but will generally also contains a whole lot more stuff. Sometimes too many assembly files removed during optimisation of the build.
A little bit of information about deployment OS and .NET versions would help.
When running a project in Test or Debug configuration in VB.NET using Visual Studio 2012, sometimes it gives the following error as the reason for "Build Failed"
Error 1 Could not copy the file "obj\Debug\MyProgram.exe" because it was not found. MyProgram
There are no issues with the code as it was just compiled seconds before this (sometimes I start the program again just to see how everything gets laid out visually and then go back to the code to make Location adjustments)
What I found is this. If I wait , when I go to test compile again -- it just magically starts working again -- Only to fail again later.
Sometimes, I can get 10-15 good compiles before it wigs out.
About my system configuration:
I do not have any other version of Visual Studio or standalone .NET language installed
The paths are set correctly (else it would never compile in the first place.. not just occassionaly fail)
The program can be a simple program with absolutely no code added (aka... New > WinForms Project > Compile)
The project, language (and all requirements), and project output path are on a local drive that is connected directly to the PC internally (using C:\code* for projects and the standard install location for Visual Studio 2012)
I checked the smart data and scanned my hard drive for any errors ... none ever encountered. The temperature of my system (CPU), and the drive is around 25-30 degrees C.
I am really baffled as to why this happens and at random. I have also tried completely clearing out the bin/ folder, and even Moving the project or repointing where the compiled output path is.
Deleting the .suo file helps sometimes, but not all the time.
I believe this is something that may be able to be tweaked in the UI somehow, however I do not know anything about manually linking and compiling programs.
Lastly -- it does not matter whether I run VS in "Administrator" mode (elevated privileges) or as a user.
Some methods that may help you
Have you tried to reinstall Visual Studio. If that does not work you may need to install some of Windows Updates, the compiler may be missing some essential libraries/references to compile your application.
Check your .Net Target Framework, setting your application to a new framework that you don't have installed can stop the application from compiling yet even stop it from being debugged, having a compiler that is to low, this may come with errors for the compiler but not for the IDE/Visual Studio to notice.
Try cleaning your project solution's output folder by right clicking your solution then try to rebuild your project/solution.
Check your compilation references in your project's properties, check if a reference added is not on your computer
Reinstall/Update .Net Framework, same here some requirements may be missing from your installation
Try installing a newer version of Visual Studio, try Vs2013 - this contains various improvements and fixes, Visual Studio 2015 is fast approaching, a recommendation install VS2015 when the full version gets released it will contain a lot of useful features for future .net programming.
Create an new Administrator account and Run VS with Administrator rights and try compiling then, this fixes some of problems in vs and other microsoft products, it might work here.
Install all of the .Net Frameworks from the lowest to current 4.5, this may help when some of the used references/libraries are not on your local hard drive.
if none of these methods work, i would not know of the problem one last thing you could try is installing Windows to another hard drive and try using that installation of windows and see what happens... Hope this helps.
Best regards!
I faced this kind of problem because of my virus guard
blocked my application(but it is not have any harmful code :) )
exclude your project folder from virus guard
or
simply disable it(not recommended)
I have a seemingly random problem where my project will run using an old version of a DLL file that no longer exists. Sometimes the real version of the DLL file will be used, other times an ancient version of the DLL file will be used. Who knows where Visual Studio is getting this DLL file from - it's months out of date!
I know that it is using the old DLL file, because when the application runs I start getting weird 'TypeLoadExceptions', complaining that methods don't exist or don't have implementations.
The following actions will sometimes help, sometimes not:
Restarting Visual Studio
Restarting the computer
Cleaning and rebuilding the solution
Deleting everything in \WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Temporary ASP.NET Files
Searching for and deleting instances of the DLL file in \Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp
Sometimes I perform all of the above steps, and it still uses an old copy of the DLL file. Where is it hiding it?!
The same issue exists on our TeamCity server which is using MSBuild. When TeamCity tries to run unit tests it uses an old DLL file.
Now, I know that I can use assembly redirection in the web.config file, but the version number of the DLL file hasn't changed (I don't bother to update it, so it just stays at version 1). I don't want to have to start versioning the DLL files just to solve this problem. I would just like to know which particular caches I need to clear so that I can get on with developing.
It hides it in the GAC. There it may reside indefinitely. Using a more recent version may indeed solve the problem, but there is an outstanding bug in Visual Studio that has to do with choosing the correct version of DLL files. (If DLL Hell wasn't bad enough, the Visual Studio team is making it worse!)
Finding it in the GAC is tricky, and I cannot advise you on how to do that, but once the old version is deleted from there, it will not be found again. Sometimes, even though you are pointing the compiler at a newer version (by date), it will use the older version, because it has the same version level (by version). That is its bug.
Who knows where Visual Studio is getting this dll from - it's months
out of date!
The Modules Window is your friend...
It'll tell you exactly where that file is coming from. You can even use it with arbitrary processes if you attach the debugger.
I too would guess that they're hiding in the GAC.
You can look in 'C:\Windows\assembly' to see all the dlls and unregister yours from there.
The problem may exists with the build order or your projects.
If your Test project is built before the application project, this cause the behaviour you describe. To fix this: right click on your main project in VS and select the Project Dependencies... option and check the build order. Changes to the build subsequence can be made here by correctly setting these dependencies.
I had a similiar problem (but without Visual Studio). I am loading a .NET dll using UnsafeLoadFrom.
On one computer (a terminal server) the old file still remains being used, regardless of updated version numbers, etc.
The reason is simple: As long as a program instance is running, which has already loaded the old dll, the new dll will never be used. All further UnsafeLoadFrom will become the old dll although the old version doesn't exist on the harddisk anymore, because it has already loaded some time ago.
The solution is to shut down all running instances of the application or even restart the computer. Then all new instances will get the updated dll.
In my case, this was caused switching to Release mode, which had a different configuration (that used different location of the DLL).
In my case, I use Visual Studio to Publish Website, and though I check the reference of the dll file has changed, but the published dll still is old. Finally I new a Publish Web Profile and choose the right configuration (such as Debug - x86 / Release - Any CPU), publish again then the dll is corrected.
While this question is old, maybe someone will stumble upon it again in his/her quest for finding a solution.
In my case i got a CS0433 error for an ASP.Net page. After deleting the content in the obj\ and bin\ folders of the project, it worked again. Probably has to be done with a closed Visual Studio. Maybe also clean out those folders in referenced projects in the same solution (if used in the project and not pulled via Nuget).
In my case, the old DLL was in
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL\MyDLL\MyDLL.dll
It DID NOT show up in c:\Windows\assembly.
I did a search of my drive for MyDLL, and it showed up as indicated above. I was debugging my test app at the time, and tried to delete the offending folder...no go...it was locked by Visual Studio. I had to stop debugging my app, close Visual Studio, and then delete the folder. Problem solved!! I don't know how my DLL got there, but it hasn't showed up there since I deleted it.
It's possible that the DLL is being referenced from another folder. It could even be on a network drive if you have one in your PATH environment variable. Here's how Windows searches for DLLs:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7d83bc18%28v=vs.80%29.aspx
In My Visual Studio 2015, I ensured that the offending Visual Studio project's Reference Path Listing is empty:
If you find such problem ,delete your Reference dll and pdb extensionfile add new references and rebuild your project .This often happens due to no rebuild of project,commit and updates.
The fix for me was making sure that the virtual directory in IIS was pointing to the correct directory. I have two projects on my system, a v4 and a v5. The virtual directory on my dev system was pointing to the v4 bin directory instead of my v5 bin directory - oops!
The file that was being cached in the dll, I couldn't trace the file, so I ended up renaming the file. This might not resolve the problem mentioned here but this was the fix that worked for me related to this question.
I tried a ton of things including re-installing VS 2107.
You can see where the DLL files are being loaded from in your Output window. After going through all mine looking for project DLL, I found it.
Clearing this worked for me.
C:\Users\YourUser\AppData\Local\assembly\dl3\222Q4G1T.8AT\JBEAR7PB.E3J\8bfcf9ab\6e61cbd5_30acd401\YourDLL.dll'
I actually deleted all the files in:
C:\Users\YourUser\AppData\Local\assembly\
Holy Crow! I had an old, old suite of applications including 2 web services and a bunch of class libraries and a click once application. Well, click once stopped publishing for VS 2005 with a bunch of 'not found' errors. So, rather than hack away at my registry as suggested on this site, I figured it was time to upgrade the projects to 2017. Well, when I did this, the projects references in my web service projects got lost. Then, rather than helpfully just telling me that with errors, VS 2017 must have went to some cached file in C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Local\Temp\WebSitePublish or C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\ProjectAssemblies or C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root and 'helpfully' just used those files instead! I had to do a hardcore search with a custom program to find all the files on my C:\ drive and delete them before I finally got the errors!
VB.NET: Can the .EXE built by VS2005 be deployed as a standalone EXE?
When I change the mode in VS2005 to "Release" and build the solution, the bin\Release directory then contains the solution .EXE file, but also a .pdb, vshost.exe and .xml file. What are these extra files and are they necessary?
I copied the .exe file to another machine and it executed properly, but there was a significant delay when it first executed - thereafter it was like any other program. What is the reason for this, and can it be helped? Is it because the other 3 files in the Release folder are not there with it?
The project template that you used to get the project started doesn't have very optimum settings. You'll get the clutter as a result. It is easily fixable. Start with Project + Properties, Compile tab. Make sure the Release build is selected, upper left combo box labeled Configuration.
The .pdb file contains debugging symbols. You don't need it for the Release build although you get slightly more informative exception messages. The stack trace will contain line numbers. You cannot trust them for a Release build though. Click Advanced Compile Options, Generate debug info = None.
The .xml file contains IntelliSense info, it will be generated when you use XML Documentation in your source code. Meant to be used for assemblies that are referenced in another project, quite pointless for an EXE project. Turn off the "Generate XML documentation file" option on the Compile tab.
The .vshost.exe file is a helper process for debugging your app. It hosts a custom version of CLR, configured differently to help with security issues while debugging. It also makes the output of Console.WriteLine() appear in the Visual Studio Output window. There's little point in having it created for the Release build. Select the Debug tab and uncheck the "Enable the Visual Studio hosting process" option.
After making these changes and rebuilding, you should only have the .exe file left in the bin\Release folder.
The slow startup is what's called a "cold start" of the .NET framework assemblies. It is caused by a slow or fragmented hard drive. Since the DLLs were never loaded before, the disk drive needs to dig through the GAC to find the files. You can probably improve it by defragging the disk. Cold starts are never as fast as warm starts though.
A classic trick, used by Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat, is to warm up the file system cache by loading their DLLs at login time. They are called "optimizer" in the Startup folder or Run registry key. Very annoying btw, they slow down other programs. You can do the same thing by writing your own little .NET program that doesn't do anything but create a few classes. Put a shortcut to it in the Startup folder.
You should be able to just ship the EXE. The PDB and VSHOST files are used for debugging, you should be able to configure your Release build to not generate these files. You can set this in the 'Advanced Compiler Settings' dialog from the Compile tab in your project properties.
alt text http://philippursglove.com/stackoverflow/compilerdebugoptions.png
(Hat-tip to Amissisco for pointing out it's the same dialog in VS2005/2008.)
I'd imagine the 'significant delay' you experienced when running the program for the first time was due to the .NET Framework being loaded into memory (and probably then paged back out to disk) - unfortunately there's not much getting round that one. You could try throwing hardware at it - memory and a solid-state disk would probably give an appreciable speed increase but may not be a cost-effective option if your application is going to be released on a significant number of PCs. However this should only take place the first time you fire up the application after a machine restart, which is why subsequent launches of your application are quicker.
Only .Exe file is required for deployment. But its better to create a setup. If you are using App.Config file / Application settings, you need to copy the exename.config file too.
Yes, you can deploy it as a standalone EXE, together with any third party DLLs that do not belong to the .NET Framework as well as other resources such as application.config. images and/or other media assets.
The .pdb contains additional symbolic debug info which is not necessary for your application to run. It's meant to assist debugging so that you see your source code instead of assembly code in the debugger.
vshost.exe is used by Visual Studio only, not too sure about the exact purpose of it though.
Whether these three files (.pdb, vshost.exe and the .xml) are present with the .exe should not affect the loading speed of your application. As .NET applications have to be compiled upon first run, the delay that you're experiencing should be partially due to that.