CS0234: Missing Assembly Reference

Question

I have some missing assemblies in my PC, and don't have any idea how to fix it.

When I create a new ASP.NET MVC 4 internet application from template (using VS 2012) everything works fine. As soon as I try to integrate Web API controller I get a missing assembly reference error. For example, when I create application using ASP.NET 4 Web API default template and click "API" on the interface I get Compilation error:

Compiler Error Message: CS0234: The type or namespace name 'Description' does not exist in the namespace 'System.Web.Http' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

I have checked the assembly and everything seems to be fine. It's in version 4.0. I have .NET framework 4.5 installed on my PC. Where should I look for the reason of the issue?

Answer 1

I saw this same error code (different missing reference) when compiling a PCL using msbuild but not when building via Visual Studio:

error CS0234: The type or namespace name 'Storage' does not exist in the namespace 'Windows' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

In my case it was caused by a 'using Windows.Storage;' statement that was not actually referenced by any code in the file. I removed the line and the error was fixed.