Visual Studio 2005 - Debugger stopped working

Question

More fun and pain with Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2005.

About two months ago, I started an assignment. In my role, I cannot install or configure development software. Trust me this has given me plenty of heartburn. No IIS is involved here, just File Sharing.

That being said, when I first started I had a problem with my debugger not working. The debugger just stopped. I was able to get it working. Now the problem has returned and I am pulling every last hair on my head.

Almost none of my symbols loads. It can't find the PDB files.

In Debugger options, I checked the Symbol section. My symbol file location entry is completely blank. ? I don't know why. I did not touch this prior to the problem occurring.

I have cleared the Temporary ASP.NET folders.

Example:

Here is my Module Output

CppCodeProvider.dll C:\\Windows\\assembly\\GAC_MSIL\\CppCodeProvider\\8.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\\CppCodeProvider.dll No No Cannot find or open the PDB file. 17 8.0.50727.762 12/2/2006 4:23 AM 6A510000-6A52C000 [1844] WebDev.WebServer.EXE: Managed

WebDev.WebHost.dll C:\\Windows\\assembly\\GAC_32\\WebDev.WebHost\\8.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\\WebDev.WebHost.dll No No Cannot find or open the PDB file. 3 8.0.50727.42 9/23/2005 4:20 AM 6D040000-6D050000 [1844] WebDev.WebServer.EXE: Managed

So I enabled the SHFUSION.dll in my versio of the the Framework I am using...

In my GAC, I can see this version of WebDev.WebHost.dll for example:

ProcessArchitecture(x86) Public key token matches: b03f5f7f11d50a3a

8.0.50727.42

I then see some custom dlls.

I should note, I created a new project. Recreated my files manually by importing them. The debugger worked 5 times and died.

I'm at a loss of what to do next?

The obvious has been checked: The project is set to Debug Configuration Manager Configuration Debug Platform .NET Build : checked.

Web.Config:

I have attempted to manually attach to the Webdev process from the Debug window and that doesn't work.

I have googled this and this problem seems to occur quite a bit.

Answer 1

You mentioned that your symbol server settings are blank. Have you tried adding the Microsoft Symbol Server location?

Go to Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> Symbols

Add the following to the symbol file locations: http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

You can also use this to point to more symbol locations. For instance, if you have a directory for all of the debugging symbols for your software, you could place the .pdb files there and add the directory to Visual Studio to load them.

Pick a directory for the symbols to save to and try again.

Answer 2

Yesterday, I reset my environment variables on my laptop from VS2005 prompt, blew away the Temporary ASP.NET files and I was debugging again.

After 4 rounds of debugging it quit again. I cleaned the folders again, and I was debugging again.

It get's better. They replaced laptop today with a desktop.
I no longer have admin priviledges. A lot of common troubleshooting steps are now off the table ( ie cleaning Temporary ASP.NET folders, installing new symbols from MS site.)

Get this, first thing I did was download the code from our Subversion repository. Built it. I was able to debug it 1 time.

I made some changes based on the problem I'm working on. 2nd time, debugger would not work.

I've been neutered as well as having to deal with this problem. Isn't life grand.

I'm beginning to wonder if the issue is not related to some folder permission/configuration of my account on the network. But I'm also considering a wide variety of tin foil hats as I pull out my hair. . .

Thanks for your help....

Answer 3

Visual Studio is probably installed in %ProgramFiles% . On Windows 7 or higher, you will need administrator rights to use programs like Visual Studio. Companies should trust their developers enough to give them accounts with Administrator rights.

If you're in the unfortunate situation of not having Administrator rights, you may be able to add the following registry key (or ask your IT department to add this key manually for you). Be sure to check that your Visual Studio 2005 installation path in the .reg file is correct.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; Run Visual Studio 2005 with administrator rights
; This is required to run / debug the program directly from the IDE
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\Common7\\IDE\\devenv.exe"="~ RUNASADMIN"