java - Xamarin VS2015 designer not working

Question

I am working with xamarin for visual studio 2015. For 2 days now the designer of the layout stopped working. It is very difficult to identify the problem cause i don't remember doing anything specific during these days.

Here is a screenshot of the error message

I have been trying to follow instructions from all over the web, including the xamarin suggestions, without any success.

Here is the detailed text of the exception:

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/android/utils/ILogger
    at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method)
    at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Class.java:2701)
    at java.lang.Class.privateGetMethodRecursive(Class.java:3048)
    at java.lang.Class.getMethod0(Class.java:3018)
    at java.lang.Class.getMethod(Class.java:1784)
    at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper.validateMainClass(LauncherHelper.java:544)
    at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper.checkAndLoadMain(LauncherHelper.java:526)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.android.utils.ILogger
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:381)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:424)
    at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:331)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357)
    ... 7 more
Error: A JNI error has occurred, please check your installation and try again
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM warning: ignoring option MaxPermSize=350m; support was removed in 8.0
Exception in thread "main" 

What i already did is: 1. Added the enviromental variable MaxPermSize setting it to different sizes without any success. 2. Reinstalled Java runtime and Java SDK both for x86 and x64. 3. I have only in my system JAVA JRE 8 and SDK 1.8.0_102 x64. 4. Reinstalled the Android SDK tools.

So originally i have the question if there is any workaroung cause i really want to use xamarin but not without the designer?

Answer 1

I found a solution, i'm using windows 10 on my machine (64-bit Windows), so instead of downgrading to java JDK 1.7, make sure to install the latest Xamarin updates since updates contains a lot of fixes.

To check for updates follow the link below. Note: check for update more than once till you receive "Xamarin is up to date!"

Go to: Debug > Options

https://developer.xamarin.com/recipes/cross-platform/ide/change_updates_channel/#Change_the_Updates_Channel_in_Visual_Studio_2015_and_earlier