Knowledge Base

Add-in 'Object Reference not set to an instance of an object' error

Category: Troubleshooting & error messages
Date: 19 Nov 2008
Product: ANTS Profiler
Versions: 3.0,3.1
Fix Version: 3.2

When using the ANTS Profiler add-in to profile a namespace, class, or method inside Visual Studio, an Object Reference not set to an instance of an object error may be thrown.

The root cause of this error seems to be a mistake in determining the type of project being edited. For desktop projects, the add-in needs to determine the assembly output name and the name of the containing folder in order to set up the profiling project. These properties are irrelevant for web projects, so if a web project is incorrectly determined to be a desktop application, the build folder property is NULL and an exception is raised.

The project type could be incorrect because you are building a solution that contains a mix of web applications and non-web applications, and the first project in the solution is a desktop project.

This issue, when caused by the circumstances above, has been addressed in ANTS Profiler 3.2. Upgrading will solve this issue if it occurs because of the circumstances described in this article.