Trying to begin using Telerik Ajax Controls--but Assembly version mismatch is infuriating

[TechSavvySam]

I'm on my last good nerve trying to get going with telerik ajax development.  My issue is everything seems to be going find and then get back into visual studio later and get a ton of design time errors rendering the controls (see attached image).

Error Rendering Control - RadScriptManager1
An unhandled exception has occurred...

Error Rendering Control - RadAjaxManager1
An unhandled exception has occurred...

Error Rendering Control - RadSkinManager1
An unhandled exception has occurred...

I know this is probably caused by some of the other attempts I took at using these controls and there is somehow some cruft left from a previous install.  But here are my questions:

1.  How the heck do I get my system clean of any of the older cruft?

2. This begs the question of how would one ever be able to develop under a newer version (or 2 different versions at one time)

I have 20 years industry experience and I have been doing .NET development every single day for the last 2 years and your products DRIVE ME CRAZY!!!  They are often harder to get set up than open source software.  This is very upsetting after dropping 1000 bucks on this stuff!!!

[Petar]

Hi Sam,

I am truly sorry to hear that you are having bad times with the RadControls for ASP.NET Ajax.

The problem that you are experiencing seems to be caused by the missing Telerik.Web.Design.dll file. To fix the problem just make sure that you have the Telerik.Web.Desing.dll in the bin folder of your project and that the version matches the version of Telerik.Web.UI.dll. Here is an article from the documentation for RadControls for ASP.NET Ajax that provides detailed information about the Telerik Web Design Assembly.

I would suggest you to use the VS Extensions for ASP.NET Ajax when you want to create new project that uses the RadControls, or if you want to add the controls to an existing project. These tasks are easy to perform using the "New Telerik Project" and "Convert to Telerik Project" commands available in the Telerik menu. You can read more about the aid of VS Extensions for ASP.NET Ajax in the Overview article.

I hope that the provided information was helpful. If you have any further inquiries, please feel free to contact us.

Sincerely yours,
Petar
the Telerik team

[TechSavvySam]

I do see that the Telerik.Web.Design.dll is missing from the bin file

HOWEVER:

1. I DID use the VS Extensions to tweak the project.
2. The project had no issues and then I came back to work on this project and it had this problem.
3. I look at the References, and the Telerik.Web.Design.dll is missing

Now I put both telerik assemblies in the bin directory and I still have the problem.  There was one article on your site that said this is caused when one of the 2 telerik assemblies is missing from the GAC so I added the second one in there.  I now see that the only on that is in there is Telerik.Web.Design in the GAC now.

I'm at a loss.  This is very frustrating because there also seems to be some battle going on between the Telerik extensions setting up the web.config and VS trying to to enable debugging in the web.config.  When I set up a Telerik project the first time I run it when VS tries to set up debugging, I get stuck to the point I have to exit VS.

[TechSavvySam]

I fixed this (for now).  the Telerik.Web.UI assembly was missing from the GAC.  I'm pretty sure I didn't delete since I already had to add it by hand to fix this issue 2 days ago.  So I'll keep an eye on it to see if I can figure out what I'm doing in VS that is causing it to get deleted from the GAC.

[TechSavvySam]

For anyone finding this because they're having the same problem, here's the solution (so far):

Note that these are specific to Q2 2010 release 2010.2.713.35

1. Go to command prompt and type:

gacutil /l

and look for these two assemblies:

  Telerik.Web.UI, Version=2010.2.713.35, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=121fae78165ba3d4, processorArchitecture=MSIL
  Telerik.Web.Design, Version=2010.2.713.35, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=121fae78165ba3d4, processorArchitecture=MSIL

my issue was that the Telerik.Web.UI assembly was missing AGAIN

2. Go to this directory (still with the command prompt):

C:\Program Files\Telerik\RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q2 2010\Bin35

type the following command for the entry that is missing:

gacutil /i Telerik.Web.UI.dll

[TechSavvySam]

 O.K. now Telerik crashed visual studio and destroyed my developer UI layout.

I'm going to enter a support ticket because this is getting me no where!

[Blaize]

Sam,
sorry to hear you had these much troubles dude.
Check these out, they might help: I had lots of troubles myself with the design time but it was just a matter of VS experience (thank god for VS2010, no design time troubles there for me).
Anyways, most of my problems were related to the service pack missing on my vs2008. I tried merely any suggestion in the forums and the documentation. A step I took even ended up to vs giving me error in any circumstance! Of course it was my fault, the article contained a warning that I could get the error: http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/vsx-telerik-web-design-assembly.html
Note: it is very important that you restart vs each time you attempt a step (putting an assembly to the gac, removing it from the gac, putting it to PublicAssemblies, etc) - vs is just a normal application, that needs to be reinitialized! This took me more than two days hitting my head on the wall...
Lots of troubles happen because of hitting environment traps. Once learned, I'm sure you'll become a telerik fan too!
Cheers,
Blaize

[Peter Bulloch]

I agree, I'm a very experience professional and have wasted weeks getting Telerik running.  Including going off and on the product.  If it was son pretty I'd be gone long ago.  My controls execute ok but they do not work in design time.  I've reloaded a million times.
Visual Studio 2010 - .NET 4.0 - Lastest Telerik.

All my controls show something like this....

Error Rendering Control - Table1An unhandled exception has occurred.
, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=121fae78165ba3d4' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)

[Erjan Gavalji]

Hi Peter,

Can you try closing all Visual Studio instances and cleaning out the Temporary ASP.NET Files folder?
Besides the typical problems described in the help article pointed by Blaize, this could be a cache issue...

The Temporary ASP.NET Files folder is located under your .NET Framework folder (%windir%\Framework(64)\[FrameworkVersion]).

Kind regards,
Erjan Gavalji
the Telerik team

[Peter Bulloch]

Nothing.  Since it seems I am not alone in my frustration, could Telerik not develop some kind of script/routine that goes through to confirm everything is configured properly?  Reloading a million times from scratch does not seem to help.

One thing I do that might be unique is that I have a "removeable" "D" drive containing all my data and databases that I take too and from the office.  I always install my programs on my permanent "C" drive but then on my latest reload of Telerik, put it on my "D" drive.  No difference.

So, in essence Telerik works perfectly in real time but not in design time.

I am happy to unload/reload again but there are residual files somewhere that never get cleansed.

[Erjan Gavalji]

Hi Peter,

I'm sorry I couldn't reply earlier.
We tried reproducing the error, but to no avail. Here is the setup we did:

1. Installed RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX to the default installation location in two machines (this way both the machines had the Telerik.Web.Design assembly added to the GAC; this assembly is the one Visual Studio uses for design time display);
2. Created a Web Application project on MachineA, located in a "removable" D:\ drive; Added a RadToolBar to the Default.aspx page with some items;
3. Detached the drive and re-attached it to the other machine (MachineB);
4. Loaded the project in Visual Studio and checked the design time display of the RadToolBar;
5. Detached the drive and re-attached it back to the original machine;
6. Loaded the project in Visual Studio and checked the design time display of the RadToolBar;

Note: We had the drive mapped with the same letter on both the machines used for testing.

Are we missing something?

Kind regards,

Erjan Gavalji
the Telerik team

[jason]

I wish I could upvote this post fifteen times.  Feelin your pain Sam.  When it works it's quite lovely, but then you update the version and you gotta change it in several places in the code. 

 

Not always the most intuitive behavior and it seems like a solveable problem on their end.  Considering the cost of the software, something as simple as a version update should be as intuitive as possible, without breaking the hell out of an application.

 

 

[Marin Bratanov]

Hi Jason,

.NET does not allow you to have several versions of the same assembly referenced at once. This is something we cannot avoid. So, when you upgrade your project with VS running, it usually would have the Design assembly from the previous version cached, and now it would have to load the next one. Hence, the conflict.

To make upgrades as easy as possible, I personally advise using the manual procedure described in the documentation: http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/introduction-upgrading.html#manual-upgrade. It usually helps to clear out ASP.NET temporary files, yet this is not something a tool of ours should do because these files may be in use.

As for version numbers change - if you reference the assemblies from the BIN, this should not be an issue, especially if you use a generic tagPrefix registration like this one in the web.config:

<pages>
 <controls>
   <add tagPrefix="telerik" namespace="Telerik.Web.UI" assembly="Telerik.Web.UI" />
 </controls>
</pages>

Regards,

Marin Bratanov
Telerik