chezray Ray Mendonsa's info droppings

Unit tests failing with 'Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation'?

I encountered an interesting problem in Visual Studio this week:

• Symptom:
  • VS2008 SP1 w/ Team Foundation Client
  • Unit tests in VS fail with 'Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation'
  • Unit tests work at w/ mstest cmdline.
  • Team explorer shows Red X on Work Items folder.
  • using witexport cmdline fails with 'Value does not fall within the expected range.' message
  • Affects all solutions in problem TFS project for user on a computer.
  • Does not affect same user on other systems.
• Resolution
  • Deleted registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 and allowed Visual Studio to rebuild settings on next load.  Something more surgical might have worked, but I was casting a wide net over different options.
  • Re-installing software or patches doesn't help...  The problem appeared to be in registry?

 At first, all I had was an austere error dialog preventing me from running any tests in Visual Studio: 'Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.' - no stack.  no details.  I managed to get a stack out of Visual Studio by attaching a debugger to it.  There must have been a better way. :S

System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException occurred
  Message="Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation."
  Source="mscorlib"
  StackTrace:
       at System.RuntimeTypeHandle.CreateInstance(RuntimeType type, Boolean publicOnly, Boolean noCheck, Boolean& canBeCached, RuntimeMethodHandle& ctor, Boolean& bNeedSecurityCheck)
       at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceSlow(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean fillCache)
  InnerException: System.ArgumentException
       Message="The Extender Provider failed to return an Extender for this object."
       Source=""
       StackTrace:
            at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.DataStore.HandleComException(Int32 hr)
            at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.DataStore.DatastoreClass.get_RootNode()
            at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.ProjectCollection..ctor(WorkItemStore store)
            at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.WorkItemStore.get_Projects()
            at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.TeamFoundationHostHelper.GetWorkItemTypes(WorkItemStore store, String projectName)
            at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.TeamFoundationHostHelper.RefreshData(Boolean serverChanged, Boolean projectChanged, Boolean fireEvent)
            at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.TeamFoundationHostHelper.Initialize(Boolean getBuildInfo, Boolean getWorkItemTypes)
            at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.TeamFoundationHostHelper..ctor(IServiceProvider serviceProvider, Boolean getBuildInfo, Boolean getWorkItemTypes)
            at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.VsetServerHelper..ctor(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
            at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.Client.VsetHelper.InitializeThrow(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
            at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.Client.VsetHelper.InitializeHelper(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
            at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Integration.Client.VsetHelper.CreateVsetHelper(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
            at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage.get_VsetHelper()
            at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.ResultsToolWindow..ctor()
            at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.ResultToolWindowHost..ctor()
       InnerException:

Posted at 03:08PM Sep 07, 2009 by raydoo in Software  |  Comments[3]