VS2010 “Script Documents” section never appears, and I can't debug JavaScript

Question

Until recently I've been able to debug JavaScript code from within VS2010 using the JIT debugger. Yesterday it stopped and now I have no idea of how to fix it. I've searched high and low, but cannot find any answers. The issue is the same in both my installs of VS -> 2008 and 2010.

I'm running VS2008 & VS2010 SP1, IE9

As far as I can tell, I should be getting a branch within the "Solution Explorer" pane named "Script Documents" that list all my script files when debugging. This doesn't appear.

Spent too much time playing with this, so any help is appreciated.

Many thanks.

Answer 1

This is worth a try as it caught me out: the debugger cannot debug both Silverlight code and Script code at the same time, if the Silverlight debugger is selected JavaScript debugging is switched off.

To resolve this go to the Project's Properties and select "Start Options". Next check that the Silverlight checkbox is NOT ticked if you want to be able to debug JavaScript. (It is unfortunate that the UI here is not clear about this side effect.)

Answer 2

Did you change your default browser to something other than IE? If so, try changing it back. I know you don't want to, but do it anyway. It works.

Answer 3

I had a similar issue. I was working on test application with ASP.NET and all of a sudden, debugger stopped working. When I created another test app, debugger worked. So there was something with my project setting which was weird. I also saw a Script Document section showing up in my solution explorer, during complication. Some of the suggestions which I got from internet were to make sure page is using correct t IE browser, attaching debugger (W3wp.exe) etc. nothing worked. Then what I found was, for some reason the page directive <% @Page --- was not there in my startup page. May be got deleted by mistake. Putting this info back, my project started debugging again..

Hope this helps.