Visual Studio can, and does, sometimes cache references to old assemblies. It does this for performance reasons but this feature is subject to certain bugs, which
can occur after installing a new version of a product in a different directory than the old one, or if toolbox components are not successfully removed on uninstall, or in
other situations.
This situation can manifest itself in several ways. When opening a form which uses one of our controls in design mode, some designer errors could appear instead
of the form. This indicates Visual Studio has either failed to load the design-time support, or has loaded support from an incorrect assembly. Or our components might
give you an error saying that the license found was invalid, which means Visual Studio is building against a different version of the product than the one you installed
and activated.
Fortunately there are fairly simple steps to follow to ensure that no old versions of an assembly are still around. Following these steps will eliminate the possibility
that having multiple versions of a product around is causing errors.
- Uninstall any versions of our product that you have installed, using the control panel.
- Search your hard drive for any remaining redistributables (e.g. Divelements.SandDock.dll) and delete them.
- Open the C:\Windows\Assembly folder (or equivalent) and ensure there are no references to our product left in the GAC.
- Open Visual Studio, open a blank form in design mode and remove any Divelements components from the toolbox. Close Visual Studio.
- Install the new version of our product, ensuring you activate if prompted.
- Try opening your project and form again.
You will now almost certainly find that everything is working as it should be.
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