Wrong assembly-references for Silverlight Sketchflow project in Blend 3

Question

In my installation of Blend 3, the SketchStyles are missing when a new project is created. I found out that this is because the following automatic references in the project are wrong:

Microsoft.Expression.Interactions
Microsoft.Expression.Prototyping.Interactivity
Microsoft.Expression.Prototyping.RunTime
Microsoft.Expression.Prototyping.SketchControls

In the project references, these all point to my project path (where they don't live).

If I remove them manually, and instead set the references to ie this: "c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Expression\Blend 3\Interactivity\Libraries\Silverlight\Microsoft.Expression.Interactions.dll" everything works.

Any ideas on why, and how to fix this? Could it be the project template somehow?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 08 '10 at 16:17

Those assemblies are referenced just by name in the .csproj files, and use a registry key to resolve to the proper place, when they can't be found that way, they default to your project folder. I would say your installation is broken somehow, what did you use to install, and from where?

The simplest solution is probably to uninstall the Blend 3 SDK, and Blend 3, and then reinstall Blend 3. There were a couple of problems from back when Blend 3 was in preview state, so if you had the MIX preview or RCs installed, it could be related.

The registry keys are documented in this post from the Expression forums:

Here is more info:

You probably have two missing registry keys: (Note, these are for 64 bit machines, if you are in 32 bit, omit the Wow6432Node)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v3.0\AssemblyFoldersEx\Expression SketchFlow

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v3.0\AssemblyFoldersEx\Expression Blend

If you enter the location of the Blend SDK there, then you should be up and running.

For the first registry path above, add a (Default) REG_SZ with Data: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Expression\Blend 3\Interactivity\Libraries\Silverlight\

For the second path above, add a (Default) REG_SZ with Data: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Expression\Blend 3\Prototyping\Libraries\Silverlight\

Man, that was a cool, spot on answer! Amazing to get an answer to this within hours. On my x64 I just had to to adjust the above "Program Files" to "Program Files (x86)" and I was back on track with SketchFlow. Thanks a million... — persistent, Apr 10 '10 at 13:20

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '11 at 00:26

Very good. The same for Expression Blend 4:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\AssemblyFoldersEx\Expression Blend

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Expression\Blend\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries


HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\AssemblyFoldersEx\Expression SketchFlow

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Expression\Blend\Silverlight\v4.0\Prototyping\Libraries

Wrong assembly-references for Silverlight Sketchflow project in Blend 3

2 Answers2