"Value does not fall within the expected range" when trying to add a reference in a project

Question

Suddenly I am getting this error "Value does not fall within the expected range" whenever I try to add a reference to any project. This also happens with a new blank project. It can list the current references fine.

I rebooted the computer. I am not sure if the recent Update 2 caused this. This is my first add reference since the update. I am using Visual Studio 2013 on Windows 7 64bit.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I did a 'devenv /setup' and that fixed it.

Detail

• Exit Visual Studio
• Click Start
• Type cmd, right click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator

• Navigate to the appropriate Visual Studio folder
  VS2012: pushd %programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE
  VS2015: pushd %programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE
  VS2017: pushd %programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\<Edition>\Common7\IDE
  VS2019: pushd %programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\<Edition>\Common7\IDE
  

• Type devenv /setup and press enter

• When the command prompt returns, you're done. Close the command window, reopen Visual Studio, and test to see if the error's resolved.

More Information

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ex6a2fad.aspx

Answer 2

In my case, project was set to use local IIS (when the project set up to use local IIS but the app does not deployed there, it cannot load project but states clearly in the error message. However this time I was keep getting Value does not fall within the expected range with any other info.

Only "solution" worked for me was:

• Edit csproj file
• Set <UseIISExpress> to true
• Set <UseIIS> to false
• Then reload the project.

(after that you can set your local IIS again)

Answer 3

In my case deleting .suo file in \.vs\[solutionName] folder fixed the problem in Visual Studio 2022

Answer 4

Some projects (e.g. some web services) require that Visual Studio be run as an administrator. After a Visual Studio upgrade, I hadn't noticed that it was no longer being started with elevated privileges automatically. When I corrected this, all the projects in the solution loaded.

Answer 5

In my case, this was because I needed a specific version of the .NET Core SDK installed.

Once I got it downloaded and installed, the projects loaded fine. Unfortunately there was no additional information in the Output tab hinting at this.