R – Visual Studio 2008 designer throws Error

designervisual studio

We have a project that was migrated from VS 2005 to 2008.

One form is using usercontrol. When I open this form I get following message from the designer:

The variable '_usercontrol' is either
undeclared or was never assigned.

at
System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomSerializerBase.Error(IDesignerSerializationManager
manager, String exceptionText, String
helpLink) at
System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomSerializerBase.DeserializeExpression(IDesignerSerializationManager
manager, String name, CodeExpression
expression) at
System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomSerializerBase.DeserializeExpression(IDesignerSerializationManager
manager, String name, CodeExpression
expression) at
System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomSerializerBase.DeserializeStatement(IDesignerSerializationManager
manager, CodeStatement statement)

If I ignore this error and continue, the usercontrol declaration is removed from the designer. Can someone please advise how I can resolve this problem?