Came across this curiosity recently.
One solution, with two projects within it (ORM and website). Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate on both computers, setup identically.
Solution and projects created on computer A, all .aspx pages have .designer.cs files.
Solution and projects copied to computer B and new web pages added, all new .aspx pages do not have .designer.cs files although the website still works fine.
Move new content back to computer A, and it now errors on rebuild with errors relating to the missing .designer.cs files.
Why would this happen? Why would two VS2010 installs handle this differently with the same solution and project files?
Right click on .aspx, choose “Convert to Web Application”.
Reason: because your ‘home’ computer is certainly different from work computer, it can be many things. Corrupted VS template, some VS addin, .net framework, anything.
Problem with generating designer.cs is occuring since VS 2003, so answer to your ‘why’ question lies within VS internals.