I have nearly slit my wrists trying to figure out why my VB.NET 2003 and Crystal Reports Developer 9 stop working together all the time. It is continually the same error.

CrystalDecisions.VSDesigner.CodeGen.ReportCodeGenerator Failed. Manifest Assembly blah blah blah blah.

On the advice of Crystal Reports I installed the update to developer 9.2 and the service Pack 3 for CR but to no avail.

I finally found the answer on another forum. For some reason VB.NET puts the wrong reference. If you make the change below you will not get that error anymore. Hopefully if someone else has had this same problem it will work for them as it has for me.

In the properties the 'Custom tool' property is:
CrystalDecisions.VSDesigner.CodeGen.ReportCodeGenerator

change it to:
CrystalDecisions.VSShell.CodeGen.ReportCodeGenerator