We've gotten a number of tickets with issues relating to the ASP.NET Extensions. By far the most common is an error message saying that the assembly can't be loaded. While I know your first instinct is to think it's not on the server, this has only been the case once ... and then, when installed, the issue was still there (meaning that something else was wrong too). At this point, I'd say it's pretty unlikely that it's the Ajax install on our servers ... we've loaded up the sample site from the Ajax Control Toolkit on our servers and it works like a champ. ;-)
So, first, some tips to figure this out:
- Make sure that you have the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions RTM (final version) installed on your dev machine. Not the Release Candidate. Not the beta. Has to be RTM. It's tough to check and be sure since the file versions are the same, but I've found that looking at the Release Notes in the installation directory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions\v1.0.61025 by default) is usually a good place to start. The Release Notes will usually have the version at the top. You can get the latest from http://ajax.asp.net.
- If you are precompiling your site before uploading to the server (which is all kinds of goodness), make sure that you restart IIS and Visual Studio if you are upgrading from a previous version to the RTM. If you don't, VS and/or IIS may have the previous version still loaded into memory, which will cause it to be referenced in your precompiled assemblies. The RTM has a different validation hash code than previous versions and if the hash codes don't match, the assembly won't load. That's a security feature in the .NET Framework to make sure you aren't loading up tampered assemblies.
- If you are absolutely sure that you have RTM installed, now the fun begins. There is a sample web.config file that has all the required settings for ASP.NET Ajax in the installation directory. You have to make sure that your web.config is exactly like this one. I've seen at least 5 tickets where customers did not include every section that is specified in that sample web.config. You must include it all. I recommend using a FileDiff tool. I, personally, use WinMerge.
Now, a link to what is probably the best one-stop shop for tips and tricks: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/01/25/links-to-asp-net-ajax-1-0-resources-and-answers-to-some-common-questions.aspx. Note that he points to a fix for using validation controls with the RTM version of ASP.NET Ajax. If you're using validation controls with an ASP.NET Ajax-enabled page, you need to do this. They mention a Windows Update with a permanent fix, but we've not seen it yet.
And some withepapers on converting (this is in the Release Notes too):
James Sawyer
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Dev Lead
Ultima Support Team