Reference DLLs not loading in Visual Studio 2010

Question

I'm working on a C# 4.0 project in VS2010 and needed to use some older DLLs containing controls that were created in C# 3.5 on VS2008. When I first add the DLLs to the references, I was able to see the namespace via intellisense and create an instance of one of the controls, but when I go to build, it gives me the following error:

The type or namespace name 'BCA' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

And I do have a using directive for that namespace already, which is now underlined in red, showing that VS cannot find it. And now, intellisense won't pick up that namespace at all.

I even tried added the controls to the toolbox (which worked) but then when I drag them to the GUI, it says that it cannot locate the DLL reference, even though it obviously knows where it is.

I even tried changing the target framework to 3.5, but still with the same results.

Any thoughts as to why this could be happening?

Edit - I've notice that in the csc.exe arguments that VS outputs, it does not have any /reference entries for the DLLs I'm trying to use. When I create the same basic project in VS2008, those entries exist. Also, I can successfully reference the DLLs in a DLL project in VS2010... it seems to just be WinForms projects that don't work.

Solution 1

Turns out that it was something to do with VS2010 defaulting to the .NET 4 client profile, as soon as I changed it to the regular profile it built fine. There's a day wasted...

Solution 2

view the target framework.. in my project, was 4.0 client profile, e the reference dll was in 4.0