Unfortunately I lost my whole project, won't do that again. not the first time, for some reason if there is an error in the program and you clean the solution, it erases every control on the form. not sure why but it's not the first time this has happened to me. once they are gone, that's it gotta start over. to make it worse it erase every damned handles clause associated with the controls that are now gone so just putting everything back isn't a solution. have to rewrite all code to. I know it's not your code, it is something wrong in Visual studio had it happen before with other programs using custom controls. Almost makes it not worth using them.