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How It Started

Everything was working fine. Yesterday, I installed xamarin in my Visual Studio 2015 and while installation it also took in all the latest updates. And from then on I started facing errors.

Error

DEP6701 : Bootstrapping failed with unexpected error: 'The system cannot find the path specified 'Bin\ARM\dbghelp.dll'.'.

enter image description here

What I Already Tried

I downloaded Windows 10 SDK and from the installer folder I ran the following .msi files

  1. SDK Debuggers-x86_en-us.msi
  2. X64 Debuggers And Tools-x64_en-us.msi
  3. X86 Debuggers And Tools-x86_en-us.msi

Also I have tried to solve it by making 'ARM' directory and putting 'dbghelp.dll' inside bin directory of my project.

But none of the above helped.

Please Note

I am using windows 10 mobile. Developer mode is ON on phone. Additionally I have also turned all radio buttons related to USB and network discovery. The project is Universal App with Apache Cordova.

IpOverUsbSvc is also running on my PC.

My VS 2015 Config enter image description here

Anyone knows how to solve it?

Thank you.

Suman Barick
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  • Can you create new project and build the project correctly? – Alan Yao - MSFT May 31 '16 at 06:09
  • Yes, as long as I am building and running the project on local machine. Also I successfully created appbundle for store for this very project and submitted. All went successfully. Only deploying to device / phone was getting this problem. – Suman Barick May 31 '16 at 06:33
  • I found some hints. And will update an answer for you. the 'Bin\ARM' folder is not a folder under your project, but a folder under windows phone SDK - "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Phone Kits\8.1\bin\ARM" – Alan Yao - MSFT May 31 '16 at 06:41
  • "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Phone Kits\8.1" in this path I have only 1 folder, i.e. "References"... No "Bin\ARM" is there for me... Is it possible that Visual Studio Update 2 has removed them thinking no longer needed.? – Suman Barick May 31 '16 at 06:48

1 Answers1

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I just ran a project on my side and started process monitor tool to check how the dbghelp.dll is involved during debugging on phone device.

Then I got the following: enter image description here

Visual studio tried to get the windows phone sdk folder from registry and access the dbghelp.dll under the sdk folder which is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Phone Kits\8.1\bin\ARM\DbgHelp.dll" on my side.

So I think the error message you got means it cannot find the file in above path. What we can do is if the path exists on your machine and whether the registry key targets to the correct path.

I also suggest you go to control panel modify the visual studio 2015 installation to uninstall the windows SDK especially the SDK for 8.1. After it completes, you can reselect the components again for reinstallation.

P.S. I am on Visual Studio 2015 update 2 with latest update.

Alan Yao - MSFT
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  • Thanks for the effort and enlightment (Upvote). I will try on these steps, and let you know. :) – Suman Barick May 31 '16 at 06:54
  • But, I have a question. Why does it go looking for Windows 8.1 things when I am building Universal App and both my PC and Mobile are on Windows 10? – Suman Barick May 31 '16 at 06:57
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    I am not very sure because I cannot find any MS internal or external docs talking about this. Just a guess: it's only because the one for 8.1 still works well for 10 without any change, so it keeps using it. But as I showed in the screenshot, vs tried to read the registry and find the dbghelp.dll. maybe there could be a new version available, who knows. :) I've confirmed no matter a Cordova project or a winjs project, VS will try to access the same file. – Alan Yao - MSFT May 31 '16 at 07:12
  • is there any progress? – Alan Yao - MSFT Jun 02 '16 at 03:28