Studio crashing when I try to select a data source

[Coderer]

I have a project that I've been working on for a while, where several
forms use DataGridViews to represent database information. The forms
are .NET 2.0, in Studio 2005. For the past couple of days, whenever I
click the little arrow in the top-right corner to show the
DataGridView Tasks subwindow, then click to expand the dropdown for
"Choose Data Source...", Studio crashes. If I "Debug" the app, of
course I don't have any symbol tables, so I can't do much, but I do
see that it's because of an unhandled null pointer exception. I can
only assume this is being generated because Studio is trying to
enumerate all the available project data sources, and coming up with a
null pointer somewhere. Also, if I just select the item, then go to
"DataSource" under Properties, and try to expand that combo box, I get
an error "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" -- the
boilerplate null pointer exception. In that case, Studio does *not*
crash. Obviously, it's still a big impediment.

This happens on existing, older forms, which I designed months ago,
when the Data Source enumerator was obviously not broken. Using the
Data --Show Data Sources menu option works fine -- it lists all the
DataSets that I've defined.

I'm really at a loss how to proceed -- the project is managed by
SourceSafe, so I could roll back to previous versions, but it's been
under heavy development, and I don't know what versions of Form A
correspond to what version of Form B, nor which versions of Forms A
and B correspond to which version of the project file. It worked a
month or two ago, the last time I tried to add a DataGridView, and it
didn't work starting at least a week ago -- that's all the information
I have to go on. If I could fix the problem *without* rolling back,
I'd be happiest... maybe there's some kind of cache I can clear or
something? I'm really not familiar enough with the underpinnings of
devenv to fix it all alone.

[Coderer]

On Apr 24, 11:17 am, Coderer <[e-mail]:

I have a project that I've been working on for a while, where several
forms use DataGridViews to represent database information. The forms
are .NET 2.0, in Studio 2005. For the past couple of days, whenever I
click the little arrow in the top-right corner to show the
DataGridView Tasks subwindow, then click to expand the dropdown for
"Choose Data Source...", Studio crashes. If I "Debug" the app, of
course I don't have any symbol tables, so I can't do much, but I do
see that it's because of an unhandled null pointer exception. I can
only assume this is being generated because Studio is trying to
enumerate all the available project data sources, and coming up with a
null pointer somewhere. Also, if I just select the item, then go to
"DataSource" under Properties, and try to expand that combo box, I get
an error "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" -- the
boilerplate null pointer exception. In that case, Studio does *not*
crash. Obviously, it's still a big impediment.

This happens on existing, older forms, which I designed months ago,
when the Data Source enumerator was obviously not broken. Using the
Data --Show Data Sources menu option works fine -- it lists all the
DataSets that I've defined.

I'm really at a loss how to proceed -- the project is managed by
SourceSafe, so I could roll back to previous versions, but it's been
under heavy development, and I don't know what versions of Form A
correspond to what version of Form B, nor which versions of Forms A
and B correspond to which version of the project file. It worked a
month or two ago, the last time I tried to add a DataGridView, and it
didn't work starting at least a week ago -- that's all the information
I have to go on. If I could fix the problem *without* rolling back,
I'd be happiest... maybe there's some kind of cache I can clear or
something? I'm really not familiar enough with the underpinnings of
devenv to fix it all alone.

Wow, it's amazing how often I fix a problem while I'm trying to
explain it to someone else. OK, when I said Data --Show Data
Sources worked, I neglected to mention that there was an odd icon for
one of them (it was my only data source based on a type, rather than a
DataSet). I realized that I probably had not updated that DataSource
definition since I changed the name of the namespace that the object
is defined in. Lo and behold, when I removed that Data Source, then
re-added it by pointing to the relocated object (updating the bindings
of the BindingSources that used that Data Source), the error went
away.

It's still a pretty serious bug that needs to be addressed, though.
Is there a "proper channel" through which I should report this? Or
maybe it's already well known?