Suddenly asp.net project is not recognizing AJAX extensions - asp.net

Several years ago I created an asp.net web page with VB2010 that runs on our company's web server. It has been running with an Ajax script manager and an Ajax update panel. It has been working fine for years.
Today when I needed to make a change in the code, the IDE is suddenly showing errors not recognizing the script manager or the update panel. (Edit for clarification: The errors showed up before I even made any changes to the code.)
For a test, I added an Ajax timer to the page, and the IDE flags that as unrecognized also.
All of the answers I have found online, including here, refer to making changes to the aspx code or to the web.config file, but I am hesitant to do that because it has been working fine all this time without needing those changes.
To my knowledge, nothing has changed since the last time I made changes to the application. It sounds like something may have been corrupted, but I have no idea where to look.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!

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ASP.NET Web Application Productivity in Visual Studio 2010

I'm working on a fairly large ASP.NET web application and I'm taking a big productivity hit when I do work in the interface. I can zip through adding features to the database and API, then I hit the interface and having to recompile and run eats up a lot of my day.
For example if i'm working on a tricky bit that isn't behaving quite right and requires a number of tweaks I'll have to go through multiple [stop/tweak/build/run/log in/navigate back to page] cycles, which really kills my flow and has me staring at the screen with my finger hovering over the hackernews bookmark each time.
I've been fiddling with ways to get around this problem but I haven't improved my situation much. Here's what I've found so far:
visual studio will restart the app frequently when you change static files (js/css/etc), which shouldn't require a restart. If you run VS with IIS express instead this problem goes away.
If I know I have a bunch of messing around to do i'll cut/paste my code into a server script tag on the markup page, run the product, and tweak until it's good, then cut/paste it back. This is annoying because it often requires setting up a number of Imports page declarations and code editing features in ASP.NET files, while better than ever in VS2010, is not as good as in C# files. Plus, it still restarts the app occasionally once enough changes are made.
I can exclude the codebehind file from the web application project, change the "codebehind" attribute in the aspx page declaration to an "src" attribute, then edit the code from there while the app runs (until i make enough changes to trigger a restart.) However now intellisense doesn't work in the codebehind, among other things.
Am I missing something blindingly obvious here, or is development in ASP.NET web applications really supposed to be this slow? Thanks for any solutions you can offer.
I never run my applications through Visual Studio. Set yourself up with IIS and then configure a site to point to the location of your application along with a faux domain. Edit your hosts file to point the domain to localhost.
Then when you want to view your site, just visit the domain that you chose. If you need to modify CSS or script, just make your changes and refresh the page. If you make a code change, compile your app and then refresh the page.
If you need to actually use the Visual Studio debugger, then just attach to the IIS process (application pool name) and your breakpoints will get hit.
I've found a combination of techniques that brings my productivity up a fair bit.
Use an alternative browser like Chrome. When you stop the VS debugger and you're using IE, VS will shut down the browser, but it won't do it with Chrome (or Firefox, or anything else.)
Switched web.config to run in Windows Authentication mode and wrote a quick transparent login routine enclosed in conditional compilation tags (debug only, this feature is not perfect for our production product.)
Now when I'm getting into it I can stop the debugger (which no longer closes the browser,) make code changes, build, optionally start the debugger again, and just hit F5 in Chrome to load the latest. The refresh obviously takes longer since the app has to start up but there's no "run browser/log in/navigate back to the page" task anymore.
Hopefully this will help somebody else in a similar situation.

"Advanced" Edit and Continue?

Alright, I've been searching forever and can't find the answer to this.
So on my work computer I run Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2005. I have a ASP.NET project (2.0) and let's say I hit F5 and start debugging. Now, once a page is done rendering I can edit the content or the codebehind code of the page without it throwing any error messages (just like if the project was stopped). Then if I save the file and hit refresh on the current debugging browser, it'll take a minute to recompile the project automatically and then refresh with the recompiled code. I can ONLY change the code in the ASP.NET project, not any class libraries that the ASP.NET project is dependent upon. I can also set breakpoints and it'll hit them (so it's not like the debugger is not attached or something).
Now on my home computer, I run Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010. I have an ASP.NET project (4.0) and let's say I hit F5 and start debugging. Now, it doesn't matter if the page it done rendering or not - I cannot change ANY of the code behind, although I can change the content. If I attempt to I get a message saying
"Changes are not allowed while code is running or if the option 'Break all processes when one process breaks' is disabled. The options can be enabled in Tools, Options, Debugging."
That being said, if I put a break point, refresh the page and hit the breakpoint THEN I can change the code and then hit F5 to continue.
So my question is - what EXACTLY do I need to do to get it to work like my work computer? It's REALLY annoying to have to stop the project or be clicking breakpoints all over to edit one little piece of code (especially when I'm so used to not having to do that at work). Is this some change in Visual Studio 2010 or something? From what I've read, how it's working at home is the real "Edit and Continue", but I can't figure out what to call it on how it works with my work pc.
Another difference (might be of help):
I set it up so that my IIS goes to the project folder, and then run the project outside of the debugger on both my work and home machines.
Now on my work machine I can make a change to the code and when I hit refresh on the non-debugged browser it'll do the same pause for recompile and then refresh the screen.
On my home machine if I make a change to the code and save it and then refresh the non-debugged browser it will not recompile the code.
So this makes me think it's some IIS setting in the end to make it auto-recompile? It clearly doesn't seem to have anything to do with VS since I'm not even going through the VS debugger to access to code at that point.
Just my thoughts: maybe you use on the work WebSite project, but at home WebApplication. In case of application all code will be compiled in the single DLL and changes should be recompiled first. In case of WebSite - each page compiles in different DLL and you can chage any of the page and it will recompile it.

WebService Debug Synchronization (why do my breakpoints give the message "The source code is different from the original version"?)

I'm fairly new to web service development, and I am really confused about how ASP.Net Development Server synchronizes with code during debug mode. When I make changes to my service, I cannot figure out how to propigate those changes so that my client can "see" them (I've been able to synchronize through a stumbling series of publishing the service, viewing the service in browser, etc... but I have a feeling there's a more reliable system than my random ritual).
Here are the symptoms I'm seeing: After I've made a change to the code behind my service (Service1.svc.cs), started the application through the debugger and attached the debugger to the WebDev.WebServer.exe process as well, my latest changes are not executed, and my breakpoints are not hit (they have the message that
"The source code is different from the original version."
What really baffles me, though, is that when the ASP.Net Development Server notification pops up in my system tray, its physical path points to my project folder, so I don't understand how it could be looking at anything but my current code files.
I do not like to play with knives but the only thing that worked for me involves editing the .csproj file itself. So, unload the project file, edit it by cutting and pasting the three asp.net files so that they are together in the ItemGroup. However, sometimes it is necessary to go further as explained here: http://carnotaurus.tumblr.com/post/4130422114/visual-studio-debugging-issue-with-files-of-the-same - Also, I give a list of other proposed solutions that did not work for me. I hope it helps.

ASP.NET - Dynamic compilation of aspx-files stopped working?

I recently ran into some strange problems. Changes to files that are not code-behind (and not gets compiled to a DLL) should not require you to recompile the whole website, and this has never been I problem for me. These should actually get compiled dynamically when you first access the resource, e.g. the first time when browsing an updated aspx-page in the browser.
But yesterday, during development of a website, I noticed that even the smallest changes in html, javascript or anything in the .aspx-files doesn't get reflected when I save and reload the page in my browser. Rebuilding doesn't help either, actually I'll have to do a "Rebuild All" (in Visual Studio 2008) in order to see the changes. This applies to all aspx-files in my project.
I tried with minor changes on files in another web application project on the same server, and there it works as it should. Something must has happened to this particular application, but I cannot figure out what.
Do you have any ideas on how to solve this?
Best regards
Not sure if this was the solution, but I noticed that I was running out of disk space. After some cleanup it started working again...

Visual Studio ASP.NET MVC Save Solution Session End?

Every now and then when I am running/debugging an ASP.NET MVC website through Visual Studio and if I am changing some CSS or HTML in a View while the project is still running, the Session will drop intermittently.
I have confirmed this in the Global.asax adding a Session_End method and setting a break point inside it. As soon as I click Save All through Visual Studio after about 10 or so minutes Session_End is called. I don't even have to refresh the actual page which I think is a little bizarre...
I realize that recompiling the app would cause the session to be lost, but I would not think modifying a View while the application is running would cause this.
Any thoughts on why this could possibly be happening?
Since you are clicking Save All, is it possible that you've also modified a code file or the web.config as well. Any sort of change -- even if you removed it -- would make the file dirty and cause it to be saved as well. This may cause the behavior you are talking about.
You might want to think about using SQL for session state in your development environment. I recently switched to this (because I needed to for our production environment) and no longer see that sort of behavior even when I stop debugging and recompile the application. As long as the session cookie is still valid, it is able to pull my session information from the database.

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