Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

December 18, 2006 • from Maui, Hawaii • 17 comments

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So it looks like I finally have some good news to report on the annoying Intellisense problem I’ve been fighting with for some time in Visual Studio. In short, the problem is that in ASP.NET pages Intellisense has not been working correctly and required explicitly going into the Visual Design View in order to get Intellisense on any controls on the page to work. Needless to say this has been really annoying especially for complex forms that contain lots of code where I would rarely touch the UI form interface. In general I try to avoid the visual designer as much as possible since it’s so slow to load content and Html Source view wasn’t enough to trigger the Intellisense ‘activation’.

In any case, it looks like the problem is – nVidia video drivers on Vista. I’ve been running with the stock Microsoft nVidia drivers (I have a nVidia go7800 in this laptop) that installed with Vista and these drivers have been otherwise working fine. Usually I get updated drivers, but the feedback on LapTop Video Forums has been so bad on some of the updated drivers from nVidia that I had put this off.

Today I was screwing around trying to get CamTasia to work here (ironically to send a small video of the issue to Microsoft) and couldn’t so I downloaded the latest nVidia drivers from here:

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12185

and to my surprise when I went into VS.NET to double check the problem my Intellisense is now working properly. Yay! I’m stoked... this has really been a pain in the ass and I’m so glad this is resolved now (I hope).

The new drivers also finally have the nVidia control panel to adjust screen color and brightness settings which had been missing in previous drivers. The default has been Ok but the default contrast was lacking which is now fixed. Also looks like the driver now properly goes into sleep mode after some idle time which just wasn’t happening with the old one.

Unfortunately I had no luck getting CamTasia to record the screen in any way – I just keep getting a garbled signal (colored lines) even when running with Aero off... <shrug>. Oddly CamTasia used to work in RC1 of Vista with old nVidia drivers. I don’t envy those guys trying to get CamTasia working in the new Vista video environment. Thankfully SnagIt works properly – that I really can’t live without. <s>

What’s really odd about this episode is that I had these problems on several machines. But in retrospect all of the machines also use nVidia video cards although they are different types of cards of various different generations. I still find it really odd that so few people ran into this issue – assuming it’s the nVidia drivers it would seem that this would catch a lot of people. <shrug>

Now the question is - what the heck is Intellisense doing to get confused by the video driver? And why only in ASP.NET pages when trying to get the generated control definitions?

The Voices of Reason

Rick Strahl
December 18, 2006

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

I got some feedback from Microsoft on this as well:

>> Normally parser runs on idle and parses incrementall. As you have noticed though, switching between views forces complete HTML parser pass. There is a trick as well: placing caret below </html> and hitting ENTER should cause full parse. Also, deleting/undoing <html> or </html> causes full document parse as well.

Apparently the problem is that the old video driver was not allowing enough idle time to let VS start parsing the page on its own. This might also explain why I had additional problems in combination with SlickRun when Cursor Lock was active. It might also explain why my machine wasn't shutting down automatically when 'idle'.

I wish I had known about this latter trick a while ago - that would have saved me a lot of grief <s>...

Betsy Weber
December 20, 2006

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

Hi Rick - We're working on getting Camtasia Studio to work better on Vista.

Check this out this blog post about recording Vista with Camtasia Studio. It can be done with a few tweaks. http://www.techsmith.com/community/blogcomments.asp?thread=267

Also, we do offer free tech support. Or, just drop me a line...Thanks for using SnagIt and Camtasia!

Rick Strahl
December 20, 2006

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

Thanks Betsy yes I looked at that entry before I started, but the problems I was having had something to do with the video drivers. I managed to get recording to work by switching back to the older video nVidia driver and it looks like I can create Flash video, but no Windows Media on Vista. I can live with that as I have an XP box to do that part on if necessary.

sbyard
December 22, 2006

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

I'm running a new Dell Precision 690 dual Zeon workstation with Vista x64 and nVidia Quadro FX3500M. The Microsoft drivers were OK apart from the inability to set the desired resolution on a second monitor.

The latest drivers from nVidia sorted that out, but still have to go into design view in ASPX pages to get the intellisense to work in code behind.

BTW - Merry Xmas Rick. Spare a thought for those of us freezing away here in Blighty!

Rick Strahl
December 25, 2006

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

Well, it looks like the problem has returned for me as well. It was working for a while but now I'm back to it not working again and having to switch into design view.

Whatever timing mechanism is used by VS.NET to handle this appears to get thrown off by something running in my system. But it makes no sense that should happen JUST WITH THE DAMN ASP.NET control definitions that get auto-generated. All other Intellisense works just fine...

<sigh>

Rick Strahl
January 03, 2007

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

Another update on this issue: After more experimentation it looks like the culprit are the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse Drivers under Vista. These drivers are causing all sorts of issues (for example with the system not going to sleep or the screen saver kicking on).

KevMo
January 03, 2007

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

I'm getting this exact same issue on XP Pro as well. I was baffled until you mentioned the Laser Mouse driver as I am using that with my laptop as well. As soon as I get home I'm going to try uninstalling it to see if it makes a difference.

Rick Strahl
January 03, 2007

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

I don't think actually it's just a driver issue. Combination driver hardware. You'll need to disconnect the mouse and use another. If you find some other drivers to use that work post it here.

There's more info here:
http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/9932.aspx

Vito
February 14, 2007

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

Has anyone heard anything further, regarding the Intellisense problem on Windows Vista with the new Natural Mouse?

I have the same problem and have been waiting patiently for a fix...

Rick Strahl
February 15, 2007

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

Vito - Microsoft recently updated the HID drivers that were causing this problem. You should be able to pick them up off Vista Update as an optional update.

Rick Strahl's Web Log
May 21, 2007

# Microsoft Wireless Mouse Issues under Vista - Rick Strahl's Web Log

Looks like the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse Receivers are causing some timing problems in Windows Vista. These are a subtle problems that show up in applications that apparently look for idle state to do work or figure out how to put themselves into a low activity mode. The Wireless Mouse receivers don't let that idle state happen apparently.

Mikhail Arkhipov (MSFT)'s WebLog
July 13, 2007

# Mikhail Arkhipov (MSFT)'s WebLog : Repairing Visual Web Developer intellisense issues

I'd like to summarize a few known issues with VS/VWD intellisense and respective solutions or workarounds. Symptom : No markup validation and no code intellisense. When you type invalid element or attribute, red squiggly line does not appear. No C#/VB

E.M.
August 07, 2007

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

writing:
<% @Page Language="VB" Explicit="True" %>
disabled my intellisense.

Chaging it to:
<%@ Page Language="VB" Explicit="True" %>

solved the problem....

Chris B
July 07, 2008

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

had the same issue

VS2005 + SP1
Windows XP SP3
Logitech MX518 mouse using only windows generic drivers
ATI Radeon 2400 pro

hitting ENTER after the /HTML tag did the trick...

Sanjeev
March 16, 2009

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

Yep! It is a video driver. It can also be solved by switching to DESIGN VIEW of the Web Page, wait for a minute to let VS to parse the page, then try again. Worked for me!

griffofk
January 18, 2010

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

I left the tilde ~ off the line below and that caused intellisense to stop

<%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc" TagName="ButtonSection" Src="~/_controltemplates/ButtonSection.ascx" %>

Drew
March 18, 2010

# re: Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense in ASP.NET pages issue resolved...

I have been chasing this problem for 2 weeks, and now I decided to fix it today. I have posted this comment on 2 other blogs, but no one has answered yet.

I get no joy when trying any of the above. I have altered the /html line, changed the spacing around the @Page declaration, and changed the Tools, Options, Text Editor, All Languages, Hide advanced members checkbox. None of the above work.

I don't get any intellisense in the .ASPX file snippet shown below:

<%@ Page Language="VB" Debug="true" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<script runat="server" type="text/VB" language="vbscript">
   Dim sSubPageName as string, sSectionName as string, sLinkName as string
   dim s as 
   Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
      If IsPostBack Then
         '
         statusMessage.Text &= "hi"
      end if
      statusMessage.Text &= sSectionName
   end sub
       
</script>
<html> ... </html>

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