Visual Studio 2015 Professional and Telerik Toolbox

[Mark]

I've installed Visual Studio 2015 Professional and I'm trying to get Telerik items in the Toolbox.  I've tried installing it using the MSI file, the Telerik Control Centre, the Telerik Toolbox Configurator in the VS and so far, nothing.  I've followed the instructions for creating a tab in the toolbox and adding the items manually, but when I go to check off the Telerik items, they're already checked off.  I've rebooted, reinstalled and even changed versions from Visual Studio 2015 Community to Visual Studio 2015 Professional.

Gettin' kinda ticked about it, now.  Anybody have any thoughts?

[Steliyan]

Hi Jerry,

Thank you for contacting us.

You have updated your Visual Studio edition, you may need to repair the installation or install the Visual Studio features again.

To install the Visual Studio integration features run the MSI installer and select the Visual Studio 2015 feature. You can check the vs2015-feature.png screenshot attached.

To repair the existing installation run the MSI installer and repair the installation. You can check the msi-repair.png screenshot attached.

Note that to be able to see the toolbox items you should be editing ASP.NET files (e.g. aspx).

Looking forward to your response.

Regards,
Steliyan
Telerik

[Ehab]

Dear Steliyan,

I have the same problem, and I did these steps with "Reset Toolbox" also, but it seems no changes

What I found is that not all Telerik tools are shown in a toolbox, the existing tools are

RadButton, RadClientDataSource, RadDataForm, GridMobileColumnEditorBase, RadClientExportManager, RadDiagram, RadCalendar, RadGantt, and RadCloudUpload

Please advice

Thanks in advance for your fast response

[Momchil]

Hi Ehab,

First make sure you have tried the Toolbox troubleshooting solutions described at http://docs.telerik.com/devtools/aspnet-ajax/general-information/troubleshooting/toolbox-troubleshooting#the-toolbox-contains-old-item-registrations.

If that doesn't fix the problem please follow these steps:

1. Check if the Read-only attribute is checked for the "%localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0" folder and the files inside it. If the Read-only attribute is set, remove it.
2. Start Visual Studio as Administrator.
3. Right click on the Toolbox and select "Reset Toolbox".

In case the controls are still missing, I recommend you to completely reset the Visual Studio Toolbox. Following the steps below will help you to do it:

1. Close all Visual Studio instances.
2. Open the "%localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0"  folder and remove all *.tbd files.
3. Using the "regedit.exe" tool, find "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\ToolboxControlsInstaller_AssemblyFoldersExCache" and "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\ToolboxControlsInstallerCache" registry keys.
4. Remove everything from these keys leaving them empty.
5. Run Visual Studio again and wait until it recreates all items in the Toolbox.

You can find more information about how to add controls to Toolbox manually at http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/introduction-adding-to-vs-toolbox-net.html.

Please try all of the above steps and let us know if this helps.

Regards,
Momchil
Telerik

[Coen]

These instructions do not work for me. I am not seeing any items in theToolbox.

The registry entry "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\ToolboxControlsInstaller_AssemblyFoldersExCache" does not exist (the part _AssemblyFoldersExCache seems incorrect).

Is it required in step 5 to run VS as Administrator?

[Momchil]

Hi Coen,

Normally the ToolboxControlsInstaller_AssemblyFoldersExCache key should exist (as in the attached picture). You don't need to run Visual Studio as Administrator on step 5. If the complete reset steps doesn't work please try repairing the product as described in the Steliyan's post and see if that fixes the Toolbox.

If your Toolbox is still empty please try the following steps. Please note that the /resetsettings command will reset Visual Studio settings:

1. Start Developer Command Prompt for VS2015.
2. Run devenv.exe /resetskippkgs command, it will clear all SkipLoading tags that have been added to VSPackages by users who want to avoid loading problem VSPackages
3. Run devenv.exe /resetsettings command, it will restore Visual Studio default settings. Optionally resets the settings to the specified .vssettings file.
4. Start Visual Studio and check if the controls are populated in the Toolbox.

If there is still no controls in the Toolbox you could also try the following steps:

Disclaimer: you will lose all your environment settings and customizations if you use /resetuserdata switch. It is for this reason that this switch is not officially supported and Microsoft does not advertise this switch to the public (you won't see this switch if you type devenv.exe /? in the command prompt). You should only use this switch as the last resort if you are experiencing an environment problem, and make sure you back up your environment settings by exporting them before using this switch.

1. Start Developer Command Prompt for VS2015.
2. Run devenv.exe /resetuserdata, it will take a couple of minutes to run as Visual Studio cleans up and sets itself back to its original state. You may open Task Manager at this point to check whether the devenv.exe process is still running. After it has completed running, you can continue to the next step.
3. Start Visual Studio and check the Toolbox.
4. If the controls are still missing you could try repairing the product installation again.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Momchil
Progress Telerik

[Coen]

Hi Momchil,

Thanks for your response. This is becoming a real nightmare! None of the steps work for me. I think I repeated everyting 5 times with slightly different scenario's and repeating the step to make the folder read only.I understand why the switch /resetuserdata is not recommended as I suspect that this made the MVC project I am working on come up with an System.BadImageFormatException.  

Repairing Progress/Telerik components (AJAX/MVC/Kendo JQuery) does not work for me either and even a very long VS2015 repair does not have the Toolbox items show up. It looks like something is being added (I have 3 versions of Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX 2017 R3 in the registy under ToolboxControlsInstaller, but no MVC). 

I decided to open an ASP.NET AJAX project and was offered to update (since I have Installed the latest version today.) . I choose to replace the Toolbox items with new ones - an option in the upgrade wizard - but to my surpise nothing was showing. 

I consider myself an expert in these kind of situations, but I have to confess am totally lost now. 

Any ideas?

Coen.

[Momchil]

Hello Coen,

From the screenshot It seems that you have the right registration for .NET 4.0 UI for ASP.NET AJAX Toolbox. If your project targets .NET 4.0 you should be able to see the UI for ASP.NET AJAX controls in the Toolbox when web page file is opened in Visual Studio.

One possible reason for missing Toolbox items might be if the installation is ran with different user than the one with which Visual Studio is started because the controls are registered per user.

You could try to diagnose why the Toolbox items are not showing by following these steps:

1. Create a DWORD registry value called “ShowDiagnosticToolboxTooltips”, set to 1, under "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0".
2. Restart VS, open the project and designer, turn on "Show All" if it isn’t already on, and hover the mouse over the unexpectedly disabled item. The tooltip should include some text explaining why the item is disabled.

Also I'd like to note that UI for ASP.NET MVC and the whole Kendo UI line of products doesn't have Toolbox integration.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Momchil
Progress Telerik

[Coen]

Thanks for the hint. 

I do not think I get any good hints from the tooltip as I do not see any appear when hovering over a disabled item. I see ToolboxReadSuccess in the same spot, so I assume I added the DWORD ShowDiagnosticToolboxTooltips correctly.  I am experienced with editing the registry.

I am logged in with the account that my MSDN subscription is registerd to. Logging that off does not make any difference. I am not 100% sure what you mean with 'if the installation is ran with different user than the one with which Visual Studio is started'. I am logging on with an AD-account that looks different then the account I use with Visual Studio. Previously an installation of Telerik controls did not have effect on the Toolbox. 

It does make me think as our organization migrated to Microsoft Azure and we do have some issues with sign-on since that time. 

I would not know of any way of installing under a different account then my AD-account that I am logged on with. It does not make any sence to me either. How to possibly approach that? I do think we migh be in the right direction. 

When I select 'Choose Items...' all the control do appear. See snapshot.

Thanks for any further hints.

Coen.

 

 

[Momchil]

Hello Coen,

You can check the attached DiagnosticReg.png for reference how the registry value looks. The other attached pictures are examples of diagnostic messages. The usual issues are when the registered controls target framework doesn't match the project target framework or when the proper designer is not open.

From the information you provided it looks that the issue is not related to your account as if it was you wouldn't see any controls in the Toolbox and registries.

Please check the Toolbox Troubleshooting documentation article and see if the information there is of any help.

Also if you can see the controls through the Choose items... dialog you could try to add them manually by following these steps:

1. Start Visual Studio.
2. Open any web site or web application project/solution.
3. Expand the Toolbox.
4. Right-click the Toolbox in the empty area underneath and choose Add Tab to create a new tab. Name the tab "Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX".
5. Right-click in the empty space of the newly created tab and select "Choose Items...".
6. Filter the assemblies by Telerik, sort by Namespace or Assembly Name and select all Telerik controls coming from Telerik.Web.UI assembly.
7. Click OK to finish the operation.
8. All selected Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX should appear in the toolbox and you should be able to use them right away.

Please let us know if you need further assistance.

Regards,
Momchil
Progress Telerik

[Coen]

I fianlly resolved this. I had skipped the most obvious: first have a page open in Design mode. This brought back all the greyed out items. After that the toolbox items were also availalbe in the Source view.

[Clive Hoggar]

Hi Jerry

did you eventually get fixed?

I have installed, reinstalled, repaired vs and used the Telerik msi and am stuck in limbo.

If I am editing a master page the toolbox shows and I can see the controls on the page. If I am editing an aspx page the toolbox does not appear and no controls are visible. In the vs tools I have looked at the ' managing associations ' tab and it shows aspx there associated with VS. 

I hope someone from Telerik is still reading these posts... Please advise what next!

It seem that problem started after an update to VS but not certain

Thanks

Clive

PS Using q2 2016 controls and editing an existing website with VS 2013 update 3

[Clive Hoggar]

I meant VS 2015 community ...

[Momchil]

Hi Clive,

It's very strange that the controls are shown only for master pages and not for aspx pages. We will need some more information in order to investigate the issue.

You could try to diagnose why the Toolbox items are not showing by following these steps:

1. Close all Visual Studio instances.
2. Create a DWORD registry value called “ShowDiagnosticToolboxTooltips”, set to 1, under "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0".
3. Start Visual Studio and open the project and designer
4. Turn on the "Show All" option with right click on the Toolbox if it isn’t already on
5. Hover the mouse over the unexpectedly disabled item. The tooltip should include some text explaining why the item is disabled.

Produce Visual Studio ActivityLog by following these steps:

1. Start Developer Command Prompt for VS2017.
2. Run command line devenv /log %userprofile%\Desktop\ActivityLog.xml

Please send the collected information along with several screenshots of the Visual Studio window with visible Toolbox and Designer for the cases when master page and aspx page is open if possible. Does this happen for several projects or just for one?

You could also check if some of the tips in the ToolBox Troubleshooting article and Design-time Troubleshooting article will help.

Looking forward to your response.

Regards,
Momchil
Progress Telerik

[Clive Hoggar]

In case anyone is struggling with this problem, I can report the solution for me...

Open a website on you development machine in vs 2015

right click on an aspx file

choose 'Web forms editor' and click 'use as default' and 'OK' out.

For unknown reasons, after a reinstall VS decided to make the default 'HTML (web forms) editor' instead so when I double clicked the aspx file to open, it treated the page as html text only.

A Homer Simpson award for me...

Thanks

Clive