My apologies, I don't think I was clear in my previous message. Rather than using just one bin dir for each project in your solution, compile each project into its own separate bin dir. This will prevent the locking problem. Michael CSO, ActiveWare LLC http://www.ActiveWareSolutions.com

Ah, I see. Is there some reason not to nest the projects in a Solution? I believe that would help address your problem. Michael CSO, ActiveWare LLC

It could be a number of things. Have you removed any auto-generated code from the constructor or anywhere else in your User Controls? This could be one source of trouble. Something else to check would be if you added your custom controls to your Toolbox through the Toolbox editor but now build your User Controls to a different destination. The only other problem I could think of would be some sort of trouble with your design-time license. Is your User Control project in the same solution as the form which you attempting to use the control on? If so, open your User Control files in the IDE and rebuild them. This will refresh the Toolbox's reference to your User Control. Then try adding the control to your form again. Hope this helps. Michael CSO, ActiveWare LLC http://www.ActiveWareSolutions.com

Why are you not able to add project-related references? Is it because of locking issues during compilation? Michael CSO, ActiveWare LLC http://www.ActiveWareSolutions.com

We ran into the same issues you're describing here. The easiest solution I found was to build all of the projects into their own directory as you suggested. Then for the one project that is your executable application, Add a Reference to each of the other projects in your solution, even if your code does not require it. Make sure the "Copy Local" property of this reference is set to "true". Just by adding the reference and setting this property, the compiler will automatically go fetch the compiled DLL's from your other project and copy them over to your output directory for your executable prior to compiling your executable. Feel free to drop me a line if you have further questions about this. Michael CSO, ActiveWare LLC http://www.ActiveWareSolutions.com

Hi Jon, I'm using a custom ColumnSorter on my ListView and I use String.Compare without any problems. I haven't seen any performance issues though I haven't tried sorting any lists with more than 30 or so entries so far. And I just ran through some test cases with numbers in the strings and they worked as I would expect. Can you post some snippets of code or maybe more specific problems that you're seeing? Michael CSO, ActiveWare LLC http://www.ActiveWareSolutions.com