title: Can't see the designer view in Visual Studio 2008 C# Windows Forms due to weird error
body: <p>when I try to click on the designer tab to get the designer view, I get this error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>To prevent possible data loss before
    loading the designer, the following
    errors must be resolved:<br>
          The designer could not be shown for this file because none of the
    classes within it can be designed. The
    designer inspected the following
    classes in the file: Form1 --- The
    base class 'System.Windows.Forms.Form'
    could not be loaded. Ensure the
    assembly has been referenced and that
    all projects have been built.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I'd like to get into the designer and have no idea what's wrong. My Form1 code looks like this at the top:</p>
  
  <pre><code>using System;
  using System.Collections.Generic;
  using System.ComponentModel;
  using System.Data;
  using System.Drawing;
  using System.Text;
  using System.Windows.Forms;
  using System.Drawing.Drawing2D;
  using System.Diagnostics;
  
      namespace foobar
      {
          public partial class Form1 : Form
          {
  
          List&lt;CharLabel&gt; allChars = new List&lt;CharLabel&gt;();
  
          public Form1()
          {
  ... etc ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any ideas?</p>