How to obtain debug information from a hang / frozen application
A while ago I blogged on how to obtain a crash dump using Visual Studio. You can use similar technique to obtain debug information from a hung or frozen application. You can use Visual Studio to obtain information on another instance of VS that is not responding and include it in the bug report at http://connect.microsoft.com . Here is how to do it:
1. Start Visual Studio and repro the hang.
2. Start another instance of VS.
3. In the second instance click Tools | Attach to Process...
4. In the list of processes locate devenv.exe.
5. Click Select... and explicitly choose 'Native' and 'Managed' code.
6. Click OK and OK to close Select dialog and Attach to Process dialog.
7. Click Debug | Break All.
8. Click Debug | Save Dump As... to save the debug information.
9. File issue at MSDN Feedback site and attach crash dump file to the report.
If VS is not frozen but rather takes a lot of time to process something, you can obtain information where VS is spending time and provide it to us with the bug report:
7. Click Debug | Break All.
8. Click Debug | Save Dump As... to save the debug information.
9. Click Debug | Run to continue execution.
Repeat steps 7-9 a few times and save dumps in different files. Attach those files to the bug report.
