A number of people have had difficulty debugging a .NET Framework 2.0/3.0/3.5 class library that loads into a native executable. The debugger will launch, and their code will run, but the debugger will not stop at breakpoints, detect that modules load...

Recently, I spent a while digging into a managed memory leak. This is a pretty well-worn blog topic, but I figured I would add my two cents to it anyway, as I found a few things that I didn't notice in the existing blogs. First, Rico wrote up the basic...

To date, one difficulty with implementing COM interfaces in managed code is that until now there has been know way to debug into QueryInterface. With CLR v4, its now possible to modify your object to trace calls to QueryInterface using the new ICusomQueryInterface...

In my little corner of the world, during the last year (give or take) Hyper-V went from something that a few people were playing with to something that every single person couldn't live without. The huge benefit to us is the 'snapshot' feature, which...

Visual Studio 2008 shipped with a feature to automatically enable script debugging when starting IE8 from Visual Studio. In other words, if you are using VS 2008 and IE8, there is no longer a need to tweak IE options to debug your site. However, this...

[Note: This post has been updated with new information] There is currently an issue in VS 2005 after you install IE8 where script debugging is broken. If you are using VS 2008, this will not be a problem. Brad Sullivan posted the work around in...

We recently had some questions on our internal Visual Studio Debugger forum about the exceptions dialog. So I decided to take a stab at explaining it. Just My Code The first step to understanding this dialog is to understand a feature called...

Sometimes you need to debug a process, and you need to attach the debugger right away, but you cannot launch the process under the debugger. For example, if the process you need to debug is a Windows Service, the Windows Service Manager must launch the...

Today’s blog is about writing your own script debugger. Visual Studio has provided ‘Script’ debugging for a long time. In this context, ‘Script’ refers to script run by jscript.dll or vbscript.dll such as the script code in Internet Explorer, classic...

Background Sometimes Visual Studio crashes. It would be nice if this wasn’t the case, but unfortunately it happens. However, like many Microsoft applications, Visual Studio has Error Reporting so that when a problem happens, you can tell us about it...

In case you missed it, Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta has been released: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=CF99C752-1391-4BC3-BABC-86BC0B9E8E5A&displaylang=en For the debugger, Visual Studio 2008 SP1 contains: As with...

I was asked today -- Why does the Visual Studio Remote Debugger Service need to be run as an administrator? Since it doesn't appear that this information is documented, I figured I would provide an answer. Running the remote debugger service as an...

Recently I have found the need to have an exception filter in some C# code that I have written. Since there is no language support for this, I wrote an IL instrumentation tool: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ExceptionFilterInjct For debugging scenarios...

I have been spending some time recently creating a custom code generator that outputs C++ and C# code from a custom XML format. This blog is about some of what I have learned while working on this. Advice #1: Use '#line' There is a really cheap...

I recently stumbled upon a blog that explained how to use the Source Server technology to enable the debugger to automatically download source files from TFS. This is useful when you work on a software project that is large enough that you debug against...

The Visual Studio Debugger team is expanding, and is looking for candidates. If you are interested in applying for a position, we have openings in Dev , Test and PM . Some great things about working on the debugger: You are helping to improve...

One of the new features that we added in Visual Studio 2008 was debugger enhancement for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services. There are four features that we support: You can step from a service client into the implementation. Just...

Just-In-Time debugging is trickier on Windows Vista than on previous operating systems. Today I am going to talk about the various knobs that you can use to make this better. Hint #1 : Use Visual Studio 2008 Beta2. I expect Beta2 to be out soon. If...

If you’re a software developer, chances are that you have written an application, and this application has crashed. When this happened, it probably put up a dialog that looks something like this: How do you figure out what went wrong? Strategy...

Last week I had this displeasure of tracking down a fairly unpleasant reference counting bug. I wound up having to solve the problem by brute force: Set a breakpoint in the constructor of leaking object Set a data breakpoint on the object's reference...

In native code, its sometimes useful to set a breakpoint condition so that a breakpoint will only stop for a particular instance of an object. To do this, I simply use the address of the object: this == (CMyObject*)0x10fc10 In managed code, the...

I have been spending some time looking at native memory leaks recently, and I decided to blog about some of the techniques which worked well for me. First, find out what objects are leaking. If your code doesn’t already have some sort of leak detection...

Way back in 2004 I posted an article talking about the 'The debugger is not properly installed' in Visual Studio 2002/3. Today I wanted to briefly talk about another reason for seeing this problem that an extremely helpful user pointed out (thanks Joel...

Recently I have been doing a bunch of work to have the debugger better support Windows Vista. Windows Vista has a bunch of new APIs/API extensions, and I have seen a bunch of talk around the IO/Security improvements. While these do look pretty cool, TaskDialogIndirect...

In my opinion, one of the best feelings in life is when you finally solve a great bug. I have a hyper-focus personality, so I really hate it when I have to go home with my problem unsolved. I have a really hard time not thinking about it. For six days...