Just a little tip, as I didn't read the error message generated as closely as I should have. I was working this weekend on the Microsoft Code Template for Building a Provider Based Feature and was migrating some existing libraries I had for VS2003 to take advantage of the features in VS2005.

First, let me say I love things in VS2005 like Generics, and the implementation of the Provider Model. I was migrating my data access libraries and error handling libraries, and was setting up some tests in nUnit as part of ongoing testing. Although I haven't changed my data and error handling models in a long time, I figured it was a great design idea to be able to change them dynamically using the Provider Model.

To make a long story short, I was running my tests for the data library, and when I invoked my Data Access classes, I was getting a "TypeInitializationException" error. I checked and double-checked my configuration file, and it appeared to all be correct. I looked at the InnerException, and it didn't seem to be much more help. However, I went further to look at the InnerException of the InnerException, and there's where I found the solution. The Rosetta Stone?

• Only one <configSections> element allowed per config file and if present must be the first child of the root <configuration> element.

A quick check indicated that I hadn't made the configSection the first element. Doh!

So there are a few lessons to learn here. 1) Make sure your configSections is first (normally not a problem, just a cut and paste issue here) and 2) Make sure you dig REAL deep into the InnerExceptions for the details and 3) the new Visualizers in vs2005 were too cool and very helpful.

Hats off to the VS2005 IDE team! It's spawned a few visualizers I can think of, so if time permits in the future, I will be publishing those right here!