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Troubleshooting

Visual Studio Error When Bar Controls Are Loaded or Saved

This problem may happen when the Form containing the bar controls is loaded or saved, or if the designer verbs are used to load/save a bar layout to a file.

The error message will typically be some sort of InvalidCastException or a NullReferenceException. The reason this happens is a bug in Visual Studio, that is described below.

The problem can arise if Copy Local is set to true for the Actipro assemblies referenced by your project, and the Actipro assemblies are located in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) on your computer. To resolve the problem, simply change Copy Local to false for the Actipro assemblies referenced by your project that are located in the GAC.

The problem is generally caused because of how Visual Studio inappropriately handles TypeConverter attributes. When Copy Local is set to true, the referenced assembly will be copied to a local folder and that will be used to instantiate the objects in the designer. Then when a TypeConverter is created, it is created by the assembly located in the GAC. So Visual Studio loads two different copies of the same assembly. The TypeConverter (created from the GAC) is passed an object (created from the local copy) and when a cast operation occurs in the TypeConverter (which normally would work fine), you get an exception because the System.Type information differs between the type in the TypeConverter and the type of the object that is passed.

Bar Control Shortcuts Don't Work in Secondary AppDomain

This problem occurs when you are using the Bar controls on a Form in a non-default AppDomain. In this scenario, the keyboard shortcuts will not work.

The problem is not actually a problem with Bars but is a setup issue with the AppDomain. In order for keyboard shortcuts to be recognized, a message pump needs to be in place in the AppDomain. This is instantiated with a call to Application.Run.

Therefore, to run a Form in a secondary AppDomain, don't create/unwrap it and call its Show method. Instead, call a static method on a class in the AppDomain, and have that method execute Application.Run on the new instance of the Form. This ensures a message pump is created and the Form is the main window in the AppDomain.