Can't start debugger in VS2012 RC

Question

Configuration:

Windows 7, 64 bit
Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2012 RC Version 11.0.50522.1 RCREL
Running VS in administrator mode
The VS solution contains a web application, with target: .NET Framework 4.

When I press F5, the solution builds... and nothing else happens.

Happens with both IIS or the VS Dev Server.
Happens with Platform Target of "Any CPU" or "x86"

If instead, I use the Debug / Attach to Process... menu, after a few seconds, I get:

"Debugger is Busy" - Debugger is performing a remote operation that is taking longer than expected. This dialog stay until I click "Terminate" and confirm it.
Then this dialog appears: "Microsoft Visual Studio" "Unable to connect to the Microsoft Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor named [COMPUTER NAME]. The network connection to the Visual Studio Remote Debugger has been closed."
After clicking OK, the 'normal' "Attach to Process" window finally shows up. In it, the list of "Available Processes" is empty.

Any suggestions or clues?

The main points that I wonder about:

Why is the list of processes empty? It is not surprising that the debugger does not work if it cannot see any processes.
Why is it trying to do "remote" debugging, when it is just accessing the local computer?

(Cross posted on social.msdn)

I tried a simple test console app (Any cpu) in VS 2012.4 version and it debugged fine. The common element amongst users seem to be VS2010 projects being opened up for the first time in VS2012. As thats the problem I am having and I can't debug my old VS2010 project. — IbrarMumtaz, Dec 31 '13 at 21:04

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 23 '12 at 16:31

I had the same problem in VS 2012 (not the RC, but the final release) using a VS 2010 project. It would build fine, but the debugger would not start. So, I modified the solution file:

Changed "Format Verion 11.00" to "Format Verion 12.00" And changed "# Visual Studio 2010" to "# Visual Studio 2012"

It's a workaround for now until my company upgrades its projects to VS 2012.

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 29 '12 at 16:23

I've got a similar setup and I'd followed all the suggestions here and on Microsoft Connect - none of which worked for me. The only thing that did work was renaming MSVSMON.EXE in the x64 folder to MSVSMON.EXE.OLD and copying in the file from the x86 folder in it's place. I'm not sure if there are any other implications in doing this but it seems to have solved the problem in my case.

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 04 '12 at 18:53

3

I eventually resolved this problem by deleting the msvsmon*.* entries in the \Windows\Prefetch folder. After doing so I could debug normally.

answered Dec 04 '12 at 18:53

Joe Loutzenhiser

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 10 '12 at 11:48

Ultimately, a Repair of the VS2012 resolved this issue for me. I followed the advice found at your social.msdn cross-post without any resolution (Devenv.exe /SafeMode /ResetSettings /ResetSkipPkgs and /Setup). Like you, my solution (VS 2010 SP1) also has a web application (targeting .NET 3.5), and the startup project is set to a winforms app. The ASP.NET development server did not start, nor did the app I was trying to debug.

Note that this issue was also posted to Connect at this link (by you?). If anyone else sees this issue, the Connect folks are requesting running the Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Feedback Tool to collect data. As I started the Repair process prior to finding the Connect issue, I did not and was not able to provide feedback to MS with logging.

Thanks Steven. No, the Connect issue was not from me. Glad to hear that you got it fixed. I'll try that sometime. For now, I've gone back to VS2010 so that I could get my work done... — Glen Little, Jul 10 '12 at 15:18

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 01 '12 at 17:17

2

Seen a similar issue when running both Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2012 at the same time. Closing Visual Studio 2010 allow the debugger to start working in Visual Studio 2012.

answered Nov 01 '12 at 17:17

JG in SD

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I had this in VS2013 trying to open a VS2010 project. Simply closing VS2010 didn't work for me but I killed the vshost.exe process using task manager and everything started working fine. Maybe my VS had somehow left behind the VS host process when it shut down. In case others stumble upon this old issue. – Tombala Aug 27 '15 at 20:25

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 28 '13 at 11:53

I had the same issue - starting debugger just told me what a good job it had made of the build and the decided that that was enough.

I feared the worst, but luckily for me a reboot fixed the problem.

I know that this is therefore a pretty useless post in as far as offering help to anyone suffering with this issue, but I thought it was worth noting the point as it shows a) another person with the same problem so please fix it MS, and b) that sometimes a reboot fixes it so maybe that tells the maintainers something.

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Apr 18 '13 at 16:29

1

If you are opening a VS 2010 project with the new VS 2012 version it's probably your bin and obj folders that are causing the problem,deleting them solved the problem for me.Or you could clean your solution but I preferred manual deletion.

answered Apr 18 '13 at 16:29

armin

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score 1 · Answer 8 · answered May 03 '15 at 10:57

1

I just closed and reopened VS. This seemed to fix my problem

answered May 03 '15 at 10:57

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Aug 18 '12 at 00:45

On another computer, with the RTM of Visual Studio 2012, I opened an older project and found that I could not press F5 to start the application. All that seemed to happen was a message in the status bar on the bottom edge of the window: "This item does not support previewing".

This solution had two projects, and the correct one was bold in the Solution Explorer, presumably indicating that it was the startup project.

However, after selecting the project and choosing "Set as Startup Project" in the context menu, I was then able to use F5 to run and debug it.

It turns out that the "This item does not support previewing" was nothing to do with the problem, but is a message that shows on the status bar whenever the item just selected in the Solution Explorer does does not support previewing.

I had the same symptom in VS2013 recently trying to debug a project after I was just debugging it in VS2010. Doing what you did was not working for me. However, what worked was to kill the vshost.exe process using task manager. I think that was the 2010 host process left behind and somehow it was not compatible with 2013 debugging. Once I killed it, hitting F5 worked just fine. — Tombala, Aug 27 '15 at 20:23

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Oct 14 '13 at 13:36

0

For what it's worth, I found that I received this error message when I had an entry missing in my hosts file. I am using local domain aliases and the one I was trying to debug with wasn't in hosts. Adding the missing entry solved the problem for me.

answered Oct 14 '13 at 13:36

Fijjit

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score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Dec 06 '13 at 22:49

Just copy all dte*.olb files, from C:\Program Files (X86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSEnv to C:\Program Files X86\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE.

From https://mycodepad.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/visual-studio-2012-4-run-as-administrator-the-application-cannot-start-error/

score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Jan 01 '14 at 12:37

Just my two cents,

I have experienced this issue twice now and it turns out after all of the suggestions I tried, it was BitDefender on my local machine that was doing this. So my fix for this problem is to try adding in exceptions to the local security software into the firewall and AV parts of it. Tell it to ignore the msvsmon.exe and devenv.exe altogether and see what difference that makes.

Otherwise try ripping it off altogether and see if the it lets you debug your solution.

You can see here for more info: http://forum.bitdefender.com/index.php?showtopic=37028

I installed the latest BitDefender version and all was fine for me.

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Feb 19 '14 at 21:11

I personally encountered some comparable problem: Visual Studio 2010 did not begin debugging but froze.

When I clicked VS it displayed a "Wait some more" or "Switch to" message box which didn't help me.

Using a task manager I could kill the *.vshost.exe process which brought VS back to life but aborted the debugging. Launching the program without debugging started the application instantly.

Solution:

Disable the indexing service for your code directories! Either deactivate the index service or uncheck the folders in the Indexing Service control panel.

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Feb 26 '15 at 16:07

Had this problem for a C++ application. Looking at the devenv.exe events in ProcMon pointed me to it trying to load a Visual Assist configuration file, which I had in my disk cleanup zeal accidentally deleted. Removing and then installing the extension again fixed it for me.

score -2 · Answer 15 · answered May 07 '13 at 15:23

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I have fixed the same issue by checking off the "Enable the Visual Studio hosting process" option from the start-up project Properties->Debug - Enable Debuggers options

answered May 07 '13 at 15:23

Ghenadie Tanasiev

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score -3 · Answer 16 · answered Dec 07 '12 at 23:05

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All you have to do to fix this is go "Project > Set as StartUp Project" then hit F5 or the debug button and it will work!!!

answered Dec 07 '12 at 23:05

DarkN3ss

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Can't start debugger in VS2012 RC

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