InitalizeLayout only fires once.  I wrote a loop going through the header captions and they are all different which means layout is reset prior to this event being fired.

I then saved a layout file to disk for all categories.

In the form_load i loaded the layout for all categories and the grid was correctly setup.  So loading the layout file worked, which i didn't expect.

Is the InitializeLayout event suppose to fire before the Page_Load event?  

Also what is wierd, the initialize layout fires and the layout is not right, page load then fires and i load the layout.  After this i expected the initializelayout to fire again, but it didn't.

Hi,

That's interesting. The deserialization code looks okay and it looks basically the same for both grids. So my best guess is that something is accessing the grid at some point after the form has deserialized and is causing the grid to lose it's layout. But that's pretty much what I figured must be happening all along.

Is there any way you can duplicate the problem in a small sample project? If you could do that, we might be able to debug it. Otherwise, it's going to be extremely difficult to track down what's causing this.

I have a few other things you can test:

You could try handling the InitializeLayout event of the grid and examining the columns to see of the column header captions are correctly set when that event fires.

Also, see if the event is firing more than once.

Also, you could try saving the grid layout at design-time by right-clicking on the grid and selecting the Layout Wizard. Then try loading that same layout at run-time, like in the Form_Load event. I'd be interested to see if the layout is, in fact, applied. If it fails to apply, then it might mean that the layout design-time layout is incompatible with the run-time layout. If it does apply, then it confirms that something is blowing away the layout at run-time.

But I expect the results of those tests will be of limited use without the ability to Debug inside the grid code.

I put a new grid on the page and bound it to the same dataset.  I then changed the first column header in the designer from SpecimenKey to SpecimenKeyChanged and ran.  The original grid layout was reset and the new grid layout wasn't.  Very wierd..

I attached the designer code with the grid.  Hopefully it will help figure out what is going on.

http://screencast.com/t/lXNo0dbOk

Thanks for all your help...

Well, it certainly looks like you are losing your layout at run-time.

Just as a test... what if you put a new grid control on the form and bind it to the same data source. Change something in the designer, like the width of a column. Then run it and see if the column width you set it lost.

If the new grid works, then we know there's a problem with one of the settings or properties on the original grid. If the new grid fails to maintain the design-time settings, then we know the problem is specific to the data source.

In the latter case, my best guess is that your data source is sending a Reset notification after the grid is bound to it. Although I can't see why that would be the case unless there's some sort of operation being performed on the DataSet at regular intervals (on a timer, for example) or on a delay after the first time it's accessed.

You are correct mike, no code and everything is setup on the designer.  I am using a complex dataset with 1 table.  The designer looks good everytime i open it, during runtime the layout gets wiped out.

This is why i asked how the grid decides to rebind?  I wasn't sure if there was something in the dataset or assembly version that would be different.  The dataset itself is in a different project in the same solution, which isn't a problem.  This particular solution has 300 + grids with each binding to datasets and we haven't had this problem in 6 years.  

We are on version - 12.1.20121.2054

I took a video of the designer design UI, runtime UI and generated designer code.  http://screencast.com/t/OrRdBCALlm7e

I attached the dataset xsd.