“This project requires a Visual Studio update to load” error when creating a Xamarin.Forms Cross-Platform Application

Question

When I try to create an Xamarin.Forms App using Visual Studio Community 2015 on Windows 7 it shows me:

"A problem was encountered creating the sub project 'ACME.Windows'. This project requires a Visual Studio update to load. Right-click on the project and choose 'Download Update'."

I've update for all the latest updates available...

How can I fix this?

Note: I cannot find the Right-click option Download Update ...

Answer 1

It is not necessary uninstall.

You need to update the "tools for Xamarin"

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Select Uninstall a Program
3. Search for Microsoft Visual Studio
4. Select MVS
5. Select "change" in top bar
6. Select modify or repair
7. Select "Cross Platform Mobile Development" and ready

Answer 2

I'm on Windows 10 and was having the same problem. It seems to be like what @SeeuD1 said about missing SDK's. Here's what I did to fix it:

First off, my exact symptoms were that I'd go to create a new Xamarin.Forms Portable Blank App. It would go through and create a solution for me that had three projects in it, one with (Portable) following the name, one with .Droid following the name, and one with .iOS following the name. There would be no windows project created. Instead I got the error specified above once.

To fix this: I went to try creating a project that was just UWP by going to File>New>Project, then Templates>Visual C#>Windows>Universal. At this point in the middle section instead of giving me any projects to choose from, It simply had the option Install Universal Windows Tools which I double clicked on which then took me through a lengthy install process.

After the install, I tried creating a new Xamarin.Forms Portable Blank App and got an experience much more like what @SeeuD1 describes in his answer. It gave me the above error twice, and it also gave me a popup for choosing the targeted version and the minimum version for my UWP app. After the process was done I had a solution with four projects in it. All the same three as above plus one with .UWP (Universal Windows) following the name.

I'm betting that if I were to now go and install the windows 8 SDK and the windows 8.1 SDK, then both of the other two error messages would most likely go away, and I'd most likely end up with two more projects in my solution.

So with that I believe that it's just a matter of installing the right SDKs (An option to install Windows 8 tools can be reached in the same way that I reached the option to install the UWP tools above, except they'd be under Windows 8 instead of Universal).

In your particular case on Windows 7 I don't believe that any of these SDKs are available to you, but this shouldn't affect you adversely unless you're wanting to do Windows/Windows Phone development. Android and iOS should still work (for iOS I'm assuming that you'd also have a mac). If you do want to do Windows/Windows Phone development, then you may need to upgrade your OS.

If that's the case, then I believe the upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is still in the free upgrade phase, though that should be ending in a few months time.

Edit: Today I installed the windows 8 SDKs and tried again. I can confirm that after installing it in addition to installing the UWP SDKs mentioned above that the error does not appear anymore. Additionally, in addition to the previously mentioned projects that were created, there are now two more. One that has .Windows (Windows 8.1) following the name, and one that has .WinPhone (Windows Phone 8.1) following the name.

Answer 3

I literally ran into this problem about 2 hours ago, when bringing up an old stagnant project of mine that I had started in Windows 7 and am now working on again with Windows 10. In both cases it was a Xamarin project in Visual Studio 2015.

In my case, the cause was a mismatch of the target framework version and profile in the .csproj file. Despite the target framework being correct in the project Properties, they were not being correctly saved for whatever reason. Thus, when trying to install a utility library from nuGet, it left my project in the state you described.

The solution was to go by this site:

Framework Profiles in .NET

and find the correct combination, then manually edit the .csproj file to adjust <TargetFrameworkProfile> and <TargetFrameworkVersion> .

Answer 4

First: I donwloaded the newest SDK (10.0.16299.0) -- still not working ... :(

Second: I edited the project file and replaced the next part :

<TargetPlatformVersion>10.0.10586.0</TargetPlatformVersion>

with :

<TargetPlatformVersion Condition=" '$(TargetPlatformVersion)' == '' ">10.0.16299.0</TargetPlatformVersion>
<TargetPlatformMinVersion>10.0.10586.0</TargetPlatformMinVersion>

Third: I reloaded the project.

I got this information after creating a new project and compared the generated one with the 'not working' one.

greetz Ruud

Answer 5

For creating Windows Phone 8 or Windows Application you need that your OS be Windows 8.1 or higher. Have you this requeriment?

Answer 6

Have you tried it with a Xamarin.Forms(Portable) ? Because I get the error twice and after this it Creates a Windows UWP App imo the errors are for the other windows Versions, because i don´t have the win 8.0 and 8.1 SDK so the first two errors could be for these SDK´s