error CS0234 The type or namespace name 'Transactions' does not exist in the namespace 'System' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

Question

I just upgraded from VS2015 to VS2017 Professional and my solution which was building fine on VS2015 is now failing to build on VS2017 with the following error:

error CS0234: The type or namespace name 'Transactions' does not exist in the namespace 'System' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

Looking at the reference for System.Transactions, it is pointing to the right location

<Reference Include="System.Transactions">
  <HintPath>..\..\..\..\..\..\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.Transactions.dll</HintPath>
</Reference>

Has anyone solved this issue?

Answer 1

In my case, the issue was with the relative path to referenced assembly. By removing the HintPath, I am now able to build the solution.

............\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.Transactions.dll

Procedure: 1. Right-click and Unload Project 2. Edit "Project name" 3. In the XML document, locate the HintPath for the assembly in questions and remove it. 4. Ensure that the HTML tag "Reference" for that assembly is properly closed. 5. Reload project and build.