visual studio XAML designer not loading

Question

I'm developing Windows phone apps on my Mac Book Pro Retina (late 2013) on a virtual machine using Parallels 9. I have Visual Studio 2012 and Windows phone 8 SDK installed and everything works fine writing code and testing it on my Lumia phone. The problem is that the XAML designer doesn't load i.e. I get the following error:

System.InvalidOperationException The document failed to open.

    at Microsoft.Expression.DesignSurface.DesignerService.CreateDesigner(IHostSourceItem item, IHostTextEditor editor, CancellationToken cancelToken)

    at Microsoft.Expression.DesignHost.IsolatedDesignerService.IsolatedDesignerView.CreateDesignerViewInfo(CancellationToken cancelToken)

Next to this error message, which is displayed instead of the designer, there's a button to reload the designer. But when I press it, it takes forever and gets no results.

I have posted my question in the Microsoft forum but it seems like a ghost town down there.

Womanhater

Would probably need to see your xaml to help troubleshoot. – Novelia

Have you tried rebuilding the project? Sometimes, this helps. – Carrasco

the exact same error is shown on every project and page I open, even when I open a new project template, this error pops up, so it can't be code-related – Womanhater

@MartinTausch rebuilding the project didn't help either... – Womanhater

Have you ran the updates to VisualStudio 2012 (not windows updates, VS updates) and have it up to the most recent version? – Novelia

@ChrisW. yes, I have downloaded the most recent SDK and update 3 of visual studio and have them installed – Womanhater

I'd suggest posting your issue on Microsoft Connect, which is a bug/issue reporting web site for products like Visual Studio. connect.microsoft.com – Waynant

Answer 1

Steps:

1. close all visual studio instances
2. browse to C:\Users\<>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0
3. rename or remove "ComponentModelCache"
4. restart Visual Studio

Disentwine

Answer 2

I also got an infinitely loading Designer. I solved it by deleting the UserControl and recreating it via source control.

Scintillator