title: VS 2010 - Error when opening User Control / Form with Designer
body: <p>C#, VS2010, WinForm application:</p>
  
  <p>Sometimes I do have the problem that I get an error message when opening some of my controls / forms. All code compiles and the application runs properly. Opening the control in the designer gives me:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>The designer loader did not provide a  root component but has not indicated  why.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>From my experience I can tell, it is usually something in my code which does not get properly initialized, e.g. a property is not set which is somehow available at runtime, but not when opened with the designer. The only issue is, that the root cause is hard to find.</p>
  
  <p>Q: Is there a chance to somehow use the debugger when the designer opens my component in Visual Studio 2010? That would help a lot and the problem tackling is most likely a matter of minutes then.</p>
  
  <p>Remark: Just to make this clear, I know how to use the debugger ;-), I only have no idea how I could tell VS2010's designer to open my control in Debug mode.</p>
  
  <p>As of 2nd SEP 2010 added:</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for your help. Basically it is the MSDN Library article describing how to do it.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>I have managed to set it up and run the second instance
  (there was not much to understand how to do it).   </li>
  <li>It only fails in my case, because the 2nd VS2010 instance (debugging Design Time) fails to find the
  symbols for my custom control. I have added the symbols manually under Debugging / symbols. No
  result, still "Breakpoint won't be hit because of missing symbols"</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>BTW, using this approach it is helpful to exclude some stuff from the symbol loading (via modules window), because this will safe a lot of time.</p>
  
  <p>Now if have to figure out how to get the symbols resolved and then I can tackle the issue.....</p>