Problem with XNA After Visual Studio 2010 Tutorial

Summary:

New XNA project references aren't connecting.

Problem with XNA After Visual Studio 2010 Tutorial

Andrew (guest) 22 Jan 2014 19:25

I have been working with your tutorials for a little while, and was really excited when you posted the script to get XNA working in Visual Studio 2013.

However, I am having a problem. When I try to create a new blank XNA project, I get 12 errors and 11 warnings, all relating to this error:

Warning 1 The primary reference "System", which is a framework assembly, could not be resolved in the currently targeted framework. ".NETFramework,Version=v4.0,Profile=Client". To resolve this problem, either remove the reference "System" or retarget your application to a framework version which contains "System".

The other "using" statements are all failing because they refer to elements of System, and thus the entire build is failing because it can't find any types or namespaces.

Error 12 The type or namespace name 'Xna' does not exist in the namespace 'Microsoft' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

Did something mess up with my script, or am I missing some version of System that I need to reference in the program for this to run?

Re: Problem with XNA After Visual Studio 2010 Tutorial

rbwhitaker 22 Jan 2014 19:44

That's a little odd. I agree with you, though, that if you get this one problem fixed, everything else (or almost everything else) should be fixed.

I'd start by looking to see if the System DLL is listed as a reference for your project. It should be, but it's worth double checking. You can find this in the Solution Explorer pane under your project's References. Look for one called System. (I'm actually seeing a few other System related ones there as well, but I think it's this plain System one that is the issue.) Right-click on it and choose Properties. Look and see where it's trying to find the file and make sure that the DLL exists where it thinks it should. (For me, it's C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0\System.dll)

If it exists where it thinks it is, I'd try deleting it and then adding it back in again.

One possibility is that you don't have the .NET Framework version 4.0 installed. It seems like that should come when you installed VS 2010 (C# Express, maybe) as the instructions in the tutorial state, but if for some reason it isn't installed, you'll have to go download it.

I'm just throwing out some ideas. No promises any of it will work (I haven't seen this specific problem before) but give it a try and let us know what happens.

Re: Problem with XNA After Visual Studio 2010 Tutorial

PiscesMike 22 Jan 2014 19:47

Try changing your Target Framework from .NET Framework 4 Client Profile to just .NET Framework 4. An article online is saying that the Client Profile may not contain all the references actually needed. Strange that "System" would be one of them, at least to me. According to the article:

"I found that even though the .NET Client profiles are supposed to be a subset of the full profile, many assemblies, including the two noted above, are not included in the "Add Reference" dialog. These assemblies properly appear in the Client Profile. It's as if the list has somehow been modified. Now, to identify the culprit…"

Link, for further reference: http://thecurlybrace.blogspot.com/2011/07/assembly-not-available-in-currently.html http://thecurlybrace.blogspot.com/2011/07/assembly-not-available-in-currently.html

On a side note, this particular person needed to go in and modify some project files. I'm assuming (and we all know how that goes) that if you're shifting from VS2010 to 2013 some internal setting may need to be adjusted.

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Re: Problem with XNA After Visual Studio 2010 Tutorial

PiscesMike 22 Jan 2014 19:52

Of course, go with RB's suggestions. Didn't realize he was posting at the same time I was!

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Re: Problem with XNA After Visual Studio 2010 Tutorial

rbwhitaker 22 Jan 2014 19:56

Hey, now! Your suggestions, PiscesMike, were just as useful as mine. You know as much about this problem as I do at this point, so thanks for chiming in. I don't deserve special clout in answering this just because my name is in the URL!

Andrew, give everything here a try and let us know where that gets you!

Andrew (guest) 22 Jan 2014 20:03

Ok,

This is definitely a weird one. I found the reference to system, but it had a yellow warning sign already attached to the filename. None of the other .net 4.0 files have that error. I tried deleting its reference and re-adding it. System appears in the list, but when I try to add it (either directly through the list, or by browsing to the file manually), I get the following error:

"A reference to System could not be added. This is not a .NET assembly."

Could the file itself be corrupted? It seems odd that a single file would not work when the rest installed perfectly.

PiscesMike 22 Jan 2014 20:09

In the link I provided, the guy is talking about the yellow warning sign actually. His particular error isn't exactly the same, but I believe that's a matter of it being different files that have been affected. He does, however, explain how to edit the file to work around the issue:

3.Locate the broken reference(s):

<Reference Include="System.Configuration.Install" />

4.Add a SpecificVersion child node:

<Reference Include="System.Configuration.Install">
<SpecificVersion>True</SpecificVersion>
</Reference>

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

PiscesMike 22 Jan 2014 20:11

Oh, as far as corrupted I'd say the correct version has instead, been misplaced.

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Last edited on 22 Jan 2014 20:14 by PiscesMike Show more

rbwhitaker 22 Jan 2014 20:22

I'm not surprised that the DLL had a yellow warning sign. It is strange though, that you're getting this with System, and can't re-add it. I suppose that means, though that you see the DLL in the list?

For me, here's the information I currently see about this DLL when I delete and try to re-add it:

Name: System
Created by: Microsoft Corporation
Version: 4.0.0.0
File Version: 4.0.30319.1 built by: TRMRel

I'm actually using VS 2012, and the project I'm looking at isn't an XNA Game, so if yours is different, it doesn't necessarily mean bad things. I'm just giving you information to compare against.

(I could give you this same information for real, if it's of any value, when I get home in front of my personal computer. I'm at work, taking a break for lunch at the moment.)

It also has a file size of 889 KB, and an MD5 checksum of fd6bd8930699f8852b32bd86e6ce04a9. You could use that to tell you if the file is corrupted. I used this tool from Microsoft to compute this.

(Just saw PiscesMike's update. He may be on to something there.)

Andrew (guest) 22 Jan 2014 20:23

Ok, I removed the line directing to the Client version.

And the problem disappeared.

So it must be that the System.dll in the Client profile is corrupt?

The bigger problem is that this is going to pop up in all new XNA projects. Would it be better to copy the version from the regular 4.0 version into the Client folder to try to fix the problem? OR would it be better to edit the template for a new XNA project so it directs to the main 4.0 folder?

Andrew (guest) 22 Jan 2014 20:25

To be more clear, by "the problem disappeared", the program now compiles and gets to the blue screen perfectly.

PiscesMike 22 Jan 2014 20:33

I would say edit the template. It's what most of the examples online are saying.

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Andrew (guest) 22 Jan 2014 20:49

Thanks for the advice everyone. Good to know it wasn't a systemic problem that took hours to solve. I will try editing the template, and go from there.

Also, thanks for the fantastic tutorials, rbwhitikar.

rbwhitaker 30 Apr 2014 01:40

Andrew, if you never got this to work before, I've got an updated script that might be worth a try. This script doesn't require you to have anything already installed, except Visual Studio (2012 or 2013, Pro or Express for Desktop). You can give it a try. It's here: https://bitbucket.org/rbwhitaker/xna-beyond-vs-2010/downloads. It's the BleedingEdge one. (It hasn't been tested as thoroughly as I'd like, but I've walked a few people through it on the chat room and it seems to be working.)