Visual Studio 2010 Toolbox controls disabled - asp.net

Question

VS 2010 Toolbox in ASP.NET application development (design mode or source) is not showing all controls (showing HTML and reporting ones), I can see all by right click (Show all) but they are greyed out or inactive.
I have used devnev.exe in VS Command line to reset, have reinstalled VS, have deleted the four hidden files in C:\Users\Ramzan\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0 with extension .tbd, all in vain.
This thing is driving me mad. I have another machine and everything works fine there.
Any help much appreciated.

Answer 1

Don't know if this applies; but I had all controls in the toolbox disabled; you could see them but they were disabled - This in Visual Studio 2010. I right click on a toolbox item then reset toolbox and then they are enabled. Note that you may lose any custom controls you added.

Answer 2

Probably your project is RUNNING. STOP the project then your toolbar items will become enable.

Answer 3

Right click in toolbox and remove check from "SHOW ALL" (if checked)

Answer 4

This was driving me crazy for a pair of days. In the choose items menu my 3rd party controls (CrystalReportsViewer) were checked. Reset toolbox did nothing to enable them. My solution was changing the target framework from .NET Framework 4 Client Profile to the full version .NET Framework 4, seems the client profile which is a subset of the version optimized for client applications does not support my controls or just using references to other 3rd party .dll librarys. This issue should only be for .NET 3.5 and 4.0, Client Profile is discontinued for .NET 4.5

Answer 5

I had the same problem and fixed it now after 3 days:
reset toolbox (not worked)
close and reopen the solution (not worked)
close and reopen the VS (it worked!)

Answer 6

After a long time googling , and mostly all answers - revolving around
Reset Toolbar
Delete .tbd files from C:\Users(your user)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0
Using devenv.exe /SafeMode & devenv.exe /ResetSettings.
None of them working out for me, making me more sick.
There is something I did which worked and thought it's worth sharing if it helps someone.
I followed all of the above steps, failing . I did Step 1 & 2 with my project (in VS 2012) open and
Right Click on Toolbox > Choose Items > Pressed Reset > ok.
Then again, Right Click on Toolbox > Add Tab > 'gave it some name' > then again
Reset Toolbox
There was some screen flash/flickering - some loading .
And to my surprise the Grey life ( grey controls ) were now available .
Hope this helps someone like me! :)

Answer 7

This worked for me..
How to completely reset the Toolbox and enable Visual Studio to rebuild it from scratch
Close Visual Studio;
Open the "c:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0" (Windows 7) folder and remove all the .TBD files;
Run the "regedit" tool. For this click the "Run" item in the Start menu and type "regedit" without quotation marks;
Find the "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ToolboxControlsInstaller_AssemblyFoldersExCache" and "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ToolboxControlsInstallerCache" keys;
Remove everything from these keys leaving them empty;
Run Visual Studio again and wait until it recreates all items in the Toolbox.

Answer 8

If you are working in WPF application and your Xaml is opened with xml, then make sure you right click and view designer, to get your toolbox controls enabled. (Toolbox controls seem to be active(enabled) only in designer mode). At least that was the case with me.

Answer 9

I know this is old but I just encountered the same problem and here is what I did:
Click on Data Flow
Right click anywhere in that window
Select SSIS Toolbox.
Hope this would help someone.

Answer 10

I worked for me doing the following steps:
Reset Toolbox (Right click in Toolbox->Reset Toolbox)
Add a new tab with any name (Right click in Toolbox->Add Tab)
Reset Toolbox (Right click in Toolbox->Reset Toolbox)

Answer 11

What helped me was changing Project type from Windows Application to Class Library - then (after re-build and reopen...) I got all Controls Enabled.

Answer 12

What did it for me on a custom control was to first remove the control from my base project. Then I had to pull up the custom control as a separate solution by itself and recompile it. I had to make sure that that it was compiled as a class library and not as a windows application. I had to make sure that it was compiled with Framework 4 (same as my base solution) and that all sub controls and projects were also using framework 4. Once I got all of those things sorted out I went back to my base project and added the newly compiled control and sure enough it was enabled.
I hope this helps someone.

Answer 13

I tried all the above mentioned still not working for me. I was working on a windows application after that I have started the web application coding on visual studio after that whenever I was opening the Visual studio this problem was occurring. I am using Visual studio 2015. So what I did, I have right-click inside the toolbox panel and selected 'choose option' then under '.Net framework' components tab I have checked all check boxes for which assembly name is 'System.windows.forms' It is working for me now.

Answer 14

Make sure the currently opened solution platform actually supports controls you need.
My problem was, for example, that I tried to add 'SqlConnection' control to .NET 6.0 application.
Once, I created a '.NET Framework Windows Form' project 'SqlConnection' control became available