What would cause a project to suddenly lose track of one of its references?

Question

I successfully complile my project, closed it, ran 7-zip on it, then opened it back up to find, on attempting to build it, three err msgs of the sort:

• The type or namespace name 'Windows' does not exist in the class or namespace 'OpenNETCF' (are you missing an assembly reference?)
• The type or namespace name 'Threading' does not exist in the class or namespace 'OpenNETCF' (are you missing an assembly reference?)
• The type or namespace name 'IO' does not exist in the class or namespace 'OpenNETCF' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

OpenNETCF is still in my References list, so...???

I removed OpenNETCF.dll, then added it back and rebuilt, but that didn't help.

Answer 1

I have the Teklynx LabelView DLL in use in my application.

To use the DLL, the product must be installed on the PC, and I have to have the DLL in my project so that my code can access it.

My product is installed on my Development PC, also. Occasionally, I will uninstall it after trying a version.

Anytime my product is uninstalled, the LabelView application becomes unregistered on the system. I have set the DLLs as SharedLegasyFile and Permanent in the VS Deployment project, yet immediately after removing my application, I can try to rebuild my VS2010 project and get undefined item errors.

To fix it, all I have to do is open the LabelView program, close it again, and my VS program will compile with no issues.

I don't know why, but I know it works.

I don't know if ctacke's OpenNETCF package has an interface that you can use to open it so that it can re-register itself, though.