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There are errors that we are familiar with, but I guess this you may never hear about it. I didn’t know it until today: Failed to create window handle for pane ”.

Visual Studio: Failed to create window handle for pane

This happened today while I was trying to open a Schema from my BizTalk Server project. Every other artifact opened well in their designer/editor like Orchestrations, Maps, and Pipelines… with the exception of Schemas.

I try to force it open by the BizTalk Schema Editor by right-clicking on the schema, open with and select the BizTalk Editor (Default) without any result.

Visual Studio: Failed to create window handle for pane open with Editor

I even try to force it open with another editor like XML (Text) Editor – it worked by the way – and once again try to open by the Schema Editor, again, without any practical result.

Note: I had 3 visual studio instances opened with 3 different projects: 2 of them worked well and only one had this problem.

Also, when I try to close this particular Visual Studio instance, I got another error:

Microsoft Visual Studio: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

Microsoft Visual Studio: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

Cause

Honestly, I have no f*** idea… but I know the solution.

Solution

To solve this problem, you need to… do what we normally do when nothing works!

  • Close the Visual Studio and open again

Problem solved!

Because I was unable to close the Visual Studio – Object reference not set to an instance of an object – I terminated the Visual Studio task using the task manager.

Visua Studio: Failed to create window handle for pane End task with Task Manager

Author: Sandro Pereira

Sandro Pereira lives in Portugal and works as a consultant at DevScope. In the past years, he has been working on implementing Integration scenarios both on-premises and cloud for various clients, each with different scenarios from a technical point of view, size, and criticality, using Microsoft Azure, Microsoft BizTalk Server and different technologies like AS2, EDI, RosettaNet, SAP, TIBCO etc. He is a regular blogger, international speaker, and technical reviewer of several BizTalk books all focused on Integration. He is also the author of the book “BizTalk Mapping Patterns & Best Practices”. He has been awarded MVP since 2011 for his contributions to the integration community. View all posts by Sandro Pereira