“Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute.” on form disposal

Question

"Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute." appears to be a common error with foreach loops, but I can't figure mine out. I have two classes of forms. One is begun on startup, and a button creates new instances of the second form, and displays them. When I close the secondary forms, I get an InvalidOperationException .

FirstForm.cs

public partial class FirstForm : Form
{
    SecondForm frmSecond;
    ...
    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        frmSecond= new SecondForm ();
        frmSecond.Show();
    }
}

SecondForm.designer.cs

partial class SecondForm
{
    ...
    protected override void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        if (disposing && (components != null))
        {
            components.Dispose();
        }
        base.Dispose(disposing); // InvalidOperationException thrown here.
    }
}

Answer 1

Can it be that it calls Dispose recursively? Can you have a look at the call stack when the exception occurs?

If this is the case, the broken collection would be the collection of controls on the form

Answer 2

If you click multiple times, then the reference in FirstForm may no longer point to whatever you are closing.

try

 private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
 {
      var second = new SecondForm();
      second.Show();
 }

Answer 3

The problem was a PowerPacks.RectangleShape object I had placed on my second form and forgot about (because it wouldn't render.) I deleted the object, and the form disposed just fine.

Testing this further, I found that any control which requires a PowerPacks.ShapeContainer ( LineShape , OvalShape , and RectangleShape ,) cause this problem, but other PowerPacks objects don't.

I'm not sure why this happens, so if anyone figures out a workaround, I'd appreciate that. But for now I'll avoid PowerPacks shapes.