R – Visual Studio 2008 Performance Profiler Problems with ASP.NET

If you open the .aspx file and switch between design view and html view and back it will prompt VS to check the controls and add any that are missing to the designer file.

In VS2013-15 there is a Convert to Web Application command under the Project menu. Prior to VS2013 this option was available in the right-click context menu for as(c/p)x files. When this is done you should see that you now have a *.Designer.cs file available and your controls within the Design HTML will be available for your control.

PS: This should not be done in debug mode, as not everything is "recompiled" when debugging.

Some people have also reported success by (making a backup copy of your .designer.cs file and then) deleting the .designer.cs file. Re-create an empty file with the same name.

There are many comments to this answer that add tips on how best to re-create the designer.cs file.

I've had this problem before and at that point gave up after reading all I could google about it (including this thread).

The solution turned out to be simple in my case. All I had to do was not use ASP.NET test attributes and simply test the MVC project as a DLL.

Step 1

Remove the extra attributes from the test.

[TestMethod]
public void TestMethod1()
{
    Page page = TestContext.RequestedPage;
    Assert.IsTrue(false, "Test ran, at least.");
}

Step 2

In Code Coverage, uncheck the MVC Project and add the MVC Project's DLL manually.

Voila, it get instrumented as a normal assembly, no errors, doesn't spin up the Development Server, also doesn't fail the Team Build.