Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005

July 04, 2006 @ 1:45 am

I’ve been noticing recently that when I run Visual Studio 2005 and I’m working on ASPX pages in a stock Web project Intellisense is not working very well. It’s been really inconsistent but the behavior I see is:

I’m sitting in a CodeBeside .cs file and I can’t see control definitions for quite some time. Then, usually after viewing the page in WYSWYG editing mode and saving the page, Intellisense starts working but no sooner. After editing the page in HTML mode and adding controls it stops working again. Open a new page, and again I see no control properties on the Page class until I view the designer.

Actually it’s not that Intellisense isn’t working at all. In the CodeBeside page I get Intellisense just fine for all custom properties defined on the partial class EXCEPT for page controls that ASP.NET dynamically generates. It’s as if ASP.NET is not properly compiling the ASPX pages in the background like it should. Note though that the project compilation works fine if I manually compile...

I never noticed this until I started working on Vista, so I’m kinda thinking this might have to do with my Vista installation and possible timing issues. Just to make sure I turned of Aero for a while to see if that might be in some way interfering (Aero seems to be causing all sorts of weird behavior in various kinds of software)

Is anybody else seeing behavior like this?

I don’t see this problem in WAP projects, although I do see the .designer files not getting updated from time to time there as well – possibly for the same reasons. It’s a little harder to see a possible effect like this because once the .designer file exist at least what’s in that file will be and actual class definition and show up. So in WAP I would only see this if I add a control or remove it possible when the .designer file doesn’t get updated which is maybe a little more rare.

Again it seems this has arrived with Vista, but I’m not 100% sure whether that’s the whole story… Curious to see if anybody else is seeing similar effects…

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# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Christoph Richter July 04, 2006 @ 9:31 am

Hi, the information, that this is on vista is very important. the intellisense have some problems in vista specially, when you come near your physical memory limit. try it, when you have low and high memory. theres a real difference. what else could be is, that in vista the update of the precompiled stuff takes longer. and so this is slower also. but its much better in the new build.

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Edgardo July 04, 2006 @ 9:56 am

I have experienced this too, and as you say the solution is to switch to design view, and then back to the code. It is a big problem when you have inherited MP. However, I have seen this in both xp and vista, so I don't think its a problem with Vista.

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by scottgu July 04, 2006 @ 10:53 am

It would be great if you could get a consistent repro to send it our way. We can then get you some dump utilities to gather more information next time it happens.

I will also ask a few folks on our team to see if they've seen similar issues with Vista.

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Donnie Hale July 04, 2006 @ 12:08 pm

Since .designer (in WAP) and controls (in stock projects) both seem to be having the problems, it sounds like Vista might be slow to do notifications on changed files. (I'm guessing that VS monitors file changes to know when to do a background recompile or a .designer file update, though I could be wrong).

It might be interesting to see if one if the sysinternal's tools would work on Vista and see what API calls are made after saving a .aspx file. If a file/directory change notification is involved, how much time elapses between when you save the .aspx file and the time that the notification happens?

FWIW...

Donnie

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Catalyst July 04, 2006 @ 12:49 pm

I get the same problem in XP. Sometimes I'll have to close and reopen the .aspx file before the code behind file will notice a change in it.

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Peter Bromberg July 04, 2006 @ 7:46 pm

Haven't had this issue yet - still working on the strange VS.NET 2005 keyboard blowup issues after installing IE7 B3. Thanks for you help on that by the way, it always makes one feel better to know you haven't gone mad! It didn't help me though. Seems like they have quite a team put together to work on it and I see they've included you in the loop. Now let's see if they actually come up with anything!

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Richard July 07, 2006 @ 4:29 pm

We get this quite a lot and we're running in XP. For us it seems to be a C# thing, all our remaining VB.net web apps never get this problem.

It seems that C# has way too many of these style problems.

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Rick Strahl July 07, 2006 @ 8:18 pm

In my case it's not a C# issue. This is an ASP.NET/VS issue. It happens both with VB.NET and C#...

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Rick Strahl July 07, 2006 @ 8:18 pm

In my case it's not a C# issue. This is an ASP.NET/VS issue. It happens both with VB.NET and C#...

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Will Gore July 24, 2006 @ 9:11 am

I've seen this happen too on XP. It usually fixes itself shortly. I'm not sure what I do to unjam it. Usually I just go about my business and next time I try it it works...

# OS reinstall and still have VS.NET 2005 ASP.NET Intellisense issues
by Rick Strahl's WebLog August 26, 2006 @ 12:20 am

I still have major issues with Intellisense not working properly for the ASP.NET CodeBehind pages until I switch into Design view and then back to code view. This now after a full OS and VS.NET 2005 reinstall, so now I'm ruling out odd configuration issues...

# ASP.NET Forums - Severe Web Application Project Problems
by VS 2005 Web Application Projects September 27, 2006 @ 4:08 pm

# VS 2005 SP1 Beta - no relief for me - Rick Strahl's Web Log
by Rick Strahl's Web Log October 02, 2006 @ 4:40 am

So I installed the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Beta in hopes that some of the issues I’ve reported (here and here and here) on Vista RC1 but this seems to have made little difference.  I still see Visual Studio crashing on exit. Intellisense is still hosed in any Web projects and I have to go into...

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Anthony October 17, 2006 @ 8:14 am

I'm getting something similar, intellisense seems to be selectively not displaying some of framesworks classes. Namely, System.Web - I don't know what to do and have a really tight deadline - please help.

# DotNetSlackers: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by DotNetSlackers Latest ASP.NET News October 26, 2006 @ 3:03 am

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Brian November 18, 2006 @ 11:31 am

Though it appears to have been said a few times, I'll chime in with another case of Intellisense not working in Windows XP. I tried test pages in both VB and C# and received the exact same result - controls in my ASPX page were only visible with Intellisense after I viewed in Design mode. Does anyone have a solution for this? I'm an Intellisense addict and I'm getting the shakes ...

# Visual Studio 2005 and Intellisense issues revisited on Vista RTM - Rick Strahl's Web Log
by Rick Strahl's Web Log November 18, 2006 @ 8:06 pm

So now that I have Vista RTM installed I took another look at my Intellisense issues in Visual Studio Web Projects and I’m sad to say that this problem is still with me. At this point I’m running: Windows Vista RTMVisual Studio 2005Visual Studio 2005 SP1 (Beta) I continue to see the...

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Greg January 19, 2007 @ 6:27 am

I had the same problem in XP. I switched the ASPX file to design view, then reopen the vb code behind and now it works.

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Rick Strahl January 19, 2007 @ 12:37 pm

Greg, check your mouse drivers. If you're using a Microsoft Laser Mouse chances they are interfering with Intellisense.

For more info and how you can fix this see:
http://www.west-wind.com/WebLog/posts/9932.aspx

# Severe Web Application Project Problems - ASP.NET Forums
by ASP.NET Forums May 17, 2007 @ 10:52 pm

re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Stig June 13, 2007 @ 7:31 am

I have similar problem in XP SP2 with Visual Studio 2005 SP1. In codebehind file (visual basic) the intellisense does not work for any objects at all (also not for objects such as response). If I press Ctrl+Space I do get a list which is totally unrelated to where I am in the file (always starts with 'AspNetHostingPermission'.

I will try once again to re-install visual studio from scratch to see if that does any good. We have been using Visual Studio for years and so far 2005 represents a big step backwards for us (just feels good getting that off my chest).

Any tips appreciated

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by GT September 26, 2007 @ 6:42 am

Does no-one actually have an answer here?

re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by sean November 13, 2007 @ 8:43 pm

I was getting this issue because of a problem with my web.config file. But I notice in general that any issue that will prevent a compile will screw up intellisense.

re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Jason December 04, 2007 @ 12:23 pm

No answer for this one yet? It occurs on 1 out of 2 of my XP workstations. My code compiles without any warnings or errors so it's not that. The only way to get my controls to appear in the intellisense list is to close & re-open the aspx page. I'm at a loss as to why one machine has this issue but the other does not.

Any further info would be greatly appreciated.

re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Rick Strahl December 04, 2007 @ 1:16 pm

The issue in my case where the Windows HID drivers not allowing the CPU to idle completly. Check my link to the Solution further above. For me this only happened in Vista but several others also mentioned XP.

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Matt MacDonald January 31, 2008 @ 6:27 am

I had this same issue, and I noticed that is primarily on pages that have AJAX updated panels on them. Sometimes its localized to only the controls contained in the panels, othertimes it affects the whole page. As soon as I remove the update panels it usually takes care of it.

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Arnab May 15, 2008 @ 3:45 am

I was also getting the same problem. I am using XP. And I don't think that there is any problem with the OS one uses. There was one sqldatasource in the page which was not written in a proper way. As i removed that, the designer page got refreshed, and the intellicense started working properly. So first we should make sure that the aspx page is propely constructed and then we should check the designer page whether the changes are there or not.

re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Zeerover July 18, 2008 @ 9:20 pm

Intellisense doesn't work reliably on Windows 2000 Server either, so I think it's not os related. When it goes away on me, I rebuild my website application to be sure I've no errors, then close the solution and reopen it. Then a minute or two after the solution is open, Intellisense will start reporting the 'missing' controls.

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Gaurav February 17, 2009 @ 2:47 am

Yes it fails if aspx structure is not correct or complex table structure.

# re: Problems ASPX Page IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2005
by Chris Field July 24, 2009 @ 10:01 am

Thanks Catalyst. It was driving me crazy. But your tip of closing out the asp file and then re-opening it worked like a charm.

I am running XP and when adding new controls the intellisense would ignore them. I tried saving, compiling, viewing in design view, viewing in design view and saving, and nothing worked. I could see all the controls that I added to the page eaelier, but but I could not see any new controls that I just added. I added a bunch of test controls and no go....Finally I closed and then opened the aspx page as you said and suddenly it started working again and I could see all the controls I added.

The odd thing is that intellisense worked perfectly fine for a week prior of editing the same page, which has an ajax control toolkit tabcontainer.

Anyway thank you again for the tip, it was driving me crazy and now it works. You've saved me a lot of frustration.....