Windows Forms with TX Text Control .NET on 64-bit CPUs

Blogged by Gunnar Giffey on August 15, 2006 and tagged with 64bit, .net, servertextcontrol.

Recently, we have received several support requests about deploying TX Text Control on 64-bit machines running Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. If an application, which contains TX Text Control, is run on a 64-bit machine, the application crashes with the error:

System.DllNotFoundException. The Text Control kernel DLL file could not be found.

This happens because the application is launched in 64-bit mode by default. TX Text Control is a 32-bit component.

To get a 32-bit application working, you will need to set the platform target property to x86. This has been defaulted by Microsoft in VS2005 to AnyCPU.

Unfortunately, there are two different methods of doing this, depending on your Visual Studio 2005 edition:

VS2005 Express

The VB and C# Express products do not expose the Target property inside the development environment. You will need to carefully modify the project file using a text or an XML editor.

1. Close the project and/or solution
2. Select Open File from the File menu
3. Navigate to the project directory, and highlight the project file
4. Press the Open button to open the project file in the XML editor

Locate the first <PropertyGroup> tag and add the following line:

<PlatformTarget>x86</PlatformTarget>

Once you have done that, simply follow this steps:

1. Save the project file
2. Reopen the project and/or solution using Open Project/Solution from the File menu
3. Continue with development, debugging, and testing

Visual Studio 2005 Standard, Professional and Team System Editions

C# Projects

1. Right click the project in the solution explorer and open properties
2. Choose the Build tab
3. Set the Platform Target property to x86

Visual Basic Projects

1. Right click the project in the solution explorer and open properties
2. Choose the Compile tab
3. Press the Advanced Compile Options button
4. Set the Target CPU property to x86