Visual Studio 2008 Remote Debugger - Not Reaching Breakpoints - visual-studio

I have installed the VS 2008 SP1 Remote debugger on the machine running the program I want to debug. I am running the Remote Debugger with no auth / allow anyone to connect on said machine. I am running VS 2008 on my development machine with the project for that application open. I have copied a .dll that i have made changed to the source and rebuilt, locally, to the executing directory of the target program, remotely, including it's .pdb file. I have attached to the process of the remote application though VS and the Remote Debugger.
The break point I put in my project says that it will never be reached because the module is not loaded.
An exception on the remote machine, even when i select retry, dose not cause any effect on my local VS instance.
I want to hit a break point i place locally when the remote application reaches it. How do I do this?
Am i miss understanding how Visual Studio Remote Debugging works?

Is the breakpoint the normal red circle or does it have a caution side in it?
If it's a red circle then the likely problem is "Just my Code" is enabled and VS thinks it's not your code. Go to debugger -> Tools -> Options and disable "Just My code". That should clear up the issue.
If it has the caution sign then hover over the break point and see what the error message says and please post it back as a comment / edit to your answer.
EDIT OP said hollow circle with the "No symbols" tooltip
Open up the modules window (debugger -> windows -> Modules). Then scroll down to the DLL that contains your code. Right click on the window and select Load Symbols. This will likely open the open file dialog. Navigate to your symbols and hit OK.

Have you installed Service Pack 1?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957912

Related

Cannot run CMake executable with or without debugger under Visual Studio 2017: "Access is denied."

I'm attempting to run a program built with a CMake-generated solution file under Visual Studio 2017's debugger in order to debug a problem. However, whenever I try selecting Start Debugging or Start Without Debugging I get the following error popup.
Unable to start program
'E:\build\someprogram\build\x64\Debug\ALL_BUILD
Access is denied.
At first glance the problem sounded like the one described here. However, that bug was allegedly fixed in VS 2017 15.5, and I currently use 15.6.7. And the location of the compiled executable isn't on a RAM disk or network drive, but on a physical drive. And the error happens when running without a debugger also.
Also I wondered about whether or not the executable was not properly configured, since it looks like the error is related to the ALL_BUILD target, but in my CMakeLists.txt I have this declaration:
add_executable(someproject ${SOURCE_FILES})
I would think that would add the executable to run. It also appears as a subproject in the Solution Explorer.
The compiled .exe runs outside of Visual Studio fine, although it crashes, which I'm trying to debug. Strangely, I cannot enter the Visual Studio debugger from the Abort/Retry/Ignore dialogue that appears after the crash by clicking Retry like it instructs; the window for choosing the Visual Studio version never appears.
It does not seem to be a permissions issue since I manually adjusted the permission of all the build directories with all permissions, with no changes. I'm also running Visual Studio with administrator privileges, and it makes no difference. Additionally I replicated the build process on an entirely different machine (Windows 10, as opposed to Windows 7) and the exact same error occurs, so I'm suspecting it's a CMake issue.
You need to set a different project as startup project (right click on your target executable project "someproject" and select "Set as StartUp Project" from the context menu). ALL_BUILD is a symbolic target and is not connected to an executable.

How can I find out what debugger is attached to w3p.exe

I'm trying to setup debugging on a class ASP project in VS 2010, and in doing that am trying to attach it's debugger to w3p.exe. I'm using Windows 7 64-bit and IIS 7.5. I've used this method successfully a few times before on another machine.
However, I'm finding that this time I am unable to attach the debugger. It's saying:
Unable to attach to the process. A debugger is already attached.
But I can't figure out what it might be. How can I determine this? Or could it be something else? I've rebooted my PC and can't yet see signs of anything running which looks like a debugger.
Setup
In case it helps, here's the steps I used to setup the environment, which I documented from my previous successful attempts:
Created new empty Visual Basic .NET Web (Best to create in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\, otherwise you will have security/ACL issues when loading the site).
Copied the contents of site folder to project folder.
In solution explorer, selected to show all files not in project. Selected all files and right click and select: "include in project".
Under project properties -> Web -> Set to use IIS and start with URL http://mysite.local
In hosts file pointed mysite.local to 127.0.0.1
In IIS setup new website pointing to the files with a host header of mysite.local
Go to application pools, ensured mysite.local was set to classic mode. No managed code.
Under ASP -> Enable Parent paths and make sure server-side debugging is enabled
Under error pages, make sure full details are shown.
Debugging in Visual Studio 2010
Run VS 2010 as Administrator
In your project, use Ctrl+F5 to run without debugging
Now, in the menu go to Debug -> Attach to Process -- This is where I fail
Tick show processes from all users AND show processes in all sessions
Make sure it is set to automatically determine type of code to debug
Look through the w3p.exe processes in the list, and based on the IIS POOL\site name, pick the right process.
Set your breakpoints and refresh -- debug as normal.
Are you having some Debug Diagnostics Tool running on your machine. Sometimes back i had the same problem the Debug Diagnostics Tool was debugging my w3p process.

Visual Studio 2010 Projects on a Network

I have a windows form project that runs/debugs fine when the project is located on my local machine but when copied to a network location the run/debug just doesn't work. No error messages are given. Clicking the tool strip button that resembles a green play button briefly turns grey, nothing happens and then it turns back green ready to be pressed again.
When the project is copied from the network onto yet another machine so that it is local again debugging/running can be performed again as expected.
Has anyone any ideas as to why I can't debug/run the project in the visual studio environment when the project sits on a network?

Visual Studio 2010 hangs when opening websites

My Visual Studio 2010 Professional hangs up 99.999% of the time when I try to open a website as "Remote Site" through an HTTP address. However if i open the site through a unc path instead of through HTTP, it works fine. Of course that is not always feasible, for example when working from offsite. The same sites (assuming they are not NET40 sites) work fine in Visual Studio 2008, so I'm pretty sure it is not a problem with the Front Page Server Extensions.
If i run 2010 in /safe mode, it opens the projects fine. So i figured maybe it was one of my installed extensions. I therefore disabled all my extensions and tried again, but it still hangs up. So it is apparently something in Visual Studio itself that is different between safe and normal modes.
I ran it in logging mode, and checked the log but did not see anything that stuck out to me. The log is uploaded here: http://pastebin.com/aUnVanB1 .
The exact symptoms I am seeing are that when i click on the project name, it pops up and asks me for my credentials. I enter those, and click OK, and it then loads the solution explorer, and i see the tree view, but then it just hangs with the progress dialog that says "Preparing Solution...". The progress bar keeps cycling, but it never finishes loading, and the spot where the properties window would be in the VS UI is completely unpainted, with just a blank, empty, white space.
Any one have any clue what else i could do to try to figure out why 2010 hangs when attempting to load websites via HTTP? Thanks!
Thanks for your question... you gave me the right clue to solve my problem!
My VS 2010 was hanging (in fact was very slow to get available) when I was openening a solution containing a remote website and I was due to press Escape a few times to cancel the pending operation... As you suggest I tried to open such a solution with /safeMode and VS2010 became available quite instantly.
So as you pointed the VS Extensions... I checked mine (all from Telerik): opening the extension manager I discovered that some updates where available. I thought the extensions updates were automatically proposed and so never checked that before. In fact, you need to manually check with the extension manager if some are available.
I've updated all my Telerik extensions... and now I may open normally all solutions including a remote website.
Thanks a lot! Perhaps... you need to updates your extensions???
Check you network order preference in Windows.
I had a similar problem where DNS would cause a hang of 1 minute before trying again (and again and finally on the next network).
Under Network, Advanced Settings (WinXP):

Visual Studio detaches from application as soon as debugging starts

I have a web application that I've always been able to run in Visual Studio and it debugs just fine (breakpoints work, I can pause execution, etc). Recently, the behavior changed suddenly, and a few things happen:
I start debugging, it lauches IE and loads the application, but after a few seconds (sometimes the page hasn't even displayed yet), Visual Studio acts as if debugging has stopped - I'm able to edit code in VS again, and the "Play" button on the toolbar is enabled. The application continues to run in the IE window just spawned, but I'm not attached to it
During this few seconds that VS is "debugging", because it detaches, my breakpoints show as hollow - as if I'm set to "Release" mode and they won't be hit. In fact, I have a breakpoint set in Page_Load, and it skips right by. I've checked, and I'm set to debug mode, though the compile mode dropdown is missing from my toolbar (I checked in the build properties to ensure I was in debug mode).
Can anybody shed some light here?
It turns out that this was actually a result of an upgrade to Windows Vista. VS wasn't being "Run as an Administrator", which caused it to lack the rights to attach to other processes for debugging. As a result, debugging would stop right after it started. Changing the VS shortcut to run as an administrator resolved this problem.
I've experienced samely looking behavior. The cause was in existence of several <system.web> sections (which is allowed by web.config schema). Visual Studio debugger (versions 2008 and 2010 were tested) looks in the first encountered section only. So if your <compilation debug="true"> tag is not in the first one, it thinks that there are no compilation.debug setting present and genrally tryes to add <compilation debug="true"> to the first <system.web>. In some cases VS2008 just silently procceds in this case. For example look here: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=510354#details"
Have you installed anything else on the server / workstation recently?
We have a third party app that doesn't allow us to debug, w3wp.exe crashes immediately upon an attempt to debug.
I ran into something similar when I had placed some code in a constructor that was crashing. Exact same issues where the Debug would disconnect just after the application started up.
The short if it, check that you haven't configured a class constructor to run during web startup that is crashing...
Quick windows 7 update: I had to add "localhost" to my list of trusted sites to correct this issue...go figure.
Just a workaround for those (like me) for whom the above solutions do not work: After starting the app you wish to debug, go to Debug -> Attach to Process, and attach it to the process you want to debug. Works on my machine.
In my case, I faced this issue with Visual Studio 2019 and 2022 as well.
I tried upgrading/downgrading Visual Studio versions but nothing helped.
On debugging, I finally found the root cause and sharing it here to help others facing the same problem.
I was using Brave browser with Visual Studio and whenever I uploaded a file in my application, the Visual Studio debugging stopped automatically. The root cause of this issue is the feature in Visual Studio to stop debugging on closing the browser. With Brave browser Visual Studio feels like we have closed the browser on uploading the file. So to fix this issue I have turned of this setting as given here.
You can find this setting here
Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Web Projects > Stop debugger when browser window is closed, close browser when debugging stops
Just turn it off and everything should work fine.

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