How do I find a file that Visual Studio says is missing?

Question

When I try to display the Visual Studio "Form1.vb [Design]" window for my Windows Forms Project, it says it cannot find the file "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.9.0". What should I do? I have Visual Studio Community 2022 (64-bit) - Version 17.9.2.

Answer 1

Hello @ROBERT W HAISLIP ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Is it an old project or it is a newly created Windows Forms VB project?

If it is an old project, which version of .NET Framework/.NET Core/.NET was this project based on?

As Tina stated here: older version supported binaries are not available in Visual Studio 2022

VS2022 introduced a number of breaking changes with the shift to 64bit CPU architecture. The assemblies in question have been replaced since VS2017 with Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.15.0.dll …

Is your project based on 32bit, or with 32bit reference? If so, please kindly check this thread: WinForms .NET Framework Projects can’t display the designer for 32bit references. See if the Designer Selection feature fixes this issue.

I have checked that, for VS 2017 and VS 2019, the "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.9.0" dll file exists. It is stored in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\edition\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies and C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\edition\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies folder.

The "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.9.0" dll file should be included in VSSDK(install with VS). Some NuGet packages may provide the "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.9.0" dll file, you can have a try(download, install…), perhaps it works.

If this issue doesn’t appear in a newly created project, I would recommend considering upgrading your project or if it’s possible trying to use a previous version of Visual Studio.

If this issue appears on a newly created project, please try following:

1.Close your solution and reopen it(File > Close Solution > reopen the solution).

2.Repair VS(VS Installer > More > Repair).

3.Update Visual Studio 2022.

Kind Regards,

Tianyu

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