I have a Click Once application (WPF) in C#. Initially when I would hit F5 to debug/launch the application it worked smoothly. Eventually, F5 only would build the solution and not launch the application (therefore I could not step through my code). For a short while I switched from Debug to Release mode and for some reason that allowed the application to launch after using F5 and I could step through my code again. But now that no longer works either. Long story short, I cannot get the application to run in a manner that allows me to step through the code. I can only do a Start without Debugging (Ctrl + F5). Obviously this doesn't do much for me other than tell me if the application works or not.
The thing that worked for me today was to open Task Manager and look for any debug programs that didn't terminate properly.
Task Manager > Processes > kill all programs "*.vshost.exe *32"
You probably have lost your start up project in the solution, or the start up project is messed up, and no correct "item" is defined for the startup.
Right click on one of your projects, and select : define as startup project.
Then retry that should do the trick. If not, check in that projects properties to see if a form or something is defined as the startup object for that project.
Edit : Obviously dont define a class library project as startup project, but choose your UI :).
I had this same issue today and came here looking for help. I tried all the suggestions here and nothing helped.
Seeing as my solution was a simple console application I recreated it from scratch. The new solution didn't exhibit the problems, so I started comparing the two.
I reset the solution and project files so that they were identical (apart from Project GUID, name and root namespace) but the first solution still didn't run.
I then tried deleting the suo files, and the bin and obj folders. Still the first solution wouldn't run.
Finally, I noticed the vshost.exe process was still running for the project. When I killed that and reloaded, it all started working correctly.
I just had this problem today. The solution turned out to be a slight twist on the issue with *.vshost.exe mentioned previously.
I could build the application just fine but msvs refused to launch it. I could manually launch the application and the time stamp on the file indicated that it was in fact a fresh build as well. *.vshost.exe wasn't showing up in the task manager, so I couldn't end the process as suggested.
When all else failed, I tried deleting the .exe's and found that *.vshost.exe would not delete because it was in use. The error message indicated that it was actually the steam client (third party software) that had somehow grabbed my *.vshost.exe file and was "using" it. Not sure how or why. At any rate, I completely shut down steam, then it let me delete *.vshost.exe. After that, building and running from msvc worked normally.
Had the same issue, eventually tried deleting all breakpoints and the debug started working again. Yet to figure out why, but at least it works.
As well as the ghost *.vshost.exe. It could also be that you have the same Solution/Project open in another version of VS. I had the same Solution open in both VS2010 and VS2015 and when running in VS2010 it compiled but failed to start. Closing the VS2015 Solution and it ran as expected.
After years of using VS 2008, I suddenly had the F5 problem not launching the application. There must be a dozen different suggestions out there - I tried a few. Someone suggested a virus. My Microsoft Security Essentials was not automatically updating (a common problem it seems), so I manually updated it. It found a virus, removed it, and the F5 problem went away !
Had this problem and tried to delete everything in bin/debug folder but could not delete vshost.exe file - kept requesting admin permission and then still could not remove it even though running from admin account. Restarted and file was gone and f5 worked again
Related
My unit tests in Visual studio almost never run saying 'Test not run'. This happens regardless of the project. All day Yesterday they ran and passed with the only issue being a test in a test class I deleted still passed for some reason. I didn't do anything different yesterday, I just open Visual Studio as normal. I closed my laptop lid last night and attempted to run them again this morning and now they will not run again. Has anyone had this issue before? I have Visual Studio 2019.
I believe the problem was that my desktop folder that contained my project was in my One Drive. I moved it to my C drive and now the tests run again.
I found this which used to cure a similar problem in VS2017:
1) Close Visual Studio
2) In Windows Explorer, find c:\users[Your Account]\AppData\Local\Temp
3) Delete everything in the folder
4) Empty the recycle bin
I'm not convinced of the need for (4) and the exact location of (2) may vary depending on your setup.
I had the same issue; moving the code to my C drive and clearing AppData\Local\Temp didn't help. Turns out that in one function, I accidentally called itself instead of the intended function, causing infinite recursion that led to a StackOverflowException.
If you have this issue, try identifying a test that stops and run in debug mode since running the test normally didn't catch the StackOverflow, but debug mode did.
I appreciate that this question has probably been answered before, but I can't find the solution to my problem.
This is that I can't run my C# program by double clicking it in windows explorer. I have tried to run the release and debug versions, but no luck. The program runs without errors or warnings inside VS. I have tried completely rewriting my project in a different solution and it still doesn't work. When I do try to run it, it uses about 75MB in the RAM but then closes. A window comes up saying "Sending information to Microsoft".
Thanks in advance.
Edit:
I've tried making another project with just a form and nothing else
It runs ok inside VS but when I run the executable from windows explorer it launches but comes up with "GUI has stopped working" when you click on the close button. GUI is the name of the app. This happens with all of the projects that I make from now.
It sounds as if you are missing something vital which your EXE depends on. It is present when you run the application from the IDE, but not when you run it from Explorer.
Are you running it from the directory which it got compiled to? This is normally under your project, under "bin\Debug" or "bin\Release". If not, then the odds are that you are missing a file which is in that folder. Copy all the files (and any subfolders) to where your EXE lives, and that should fix the issue.
Another possibility is that you need a file which the IDE can find, but Windows cannot.
Debugging issues which cause a crash without a callstack are always tricky. I'd suggest that you add some logging to your app, so you can see what is going on prior to the crash. If the issue is caused by your code, then logging will help to find it.
Or, even quicker and dirtier, throw up a messagebox before every line. Give each one a unique message, and you can then investigate the code around the area of the last messagebox that you see before the crash.
It turns out, there was a problem with visual studio or windows. I was running a version of windows 10 but after the update that came on the 06/01/16 it works OK now.
My guess is that it was a problem with the universal windows extension in visual studio
Update:
As of about 7 months later visual studio is working very well on my new computer with windows 10. I also use the latest version on vs which may have been my problem Because my old machine was that: old. It may not have been compatible with the latest software.
I am having great problems running the application in the debugger from Visual Studio 2008.
When I'm using vshost.exe, it says:
And when vshost.exe is turned of, it simply states:
Interesting thing about it is that when i do use vshost, debugger is actually started and breakpoint is hit on the first line of the Main().
I tried:
rebuilding the project(s)
removing .ncb, .suo, .user for the projects
repairing Visual Studio 2008
changing the build architecture for the project
... no help there...
Any experience in (trouble)shooting that?
More info: some projects DO work, and one that I have to work on, does not.
I have some ideas such as:
trying to create NEW project, add thing by thing to it and see at what point it will start to miss behave
work it other way around, delete project by item by item to see when it will (if it will) be working OK again.
EDIT (for google, as I see that there are many similar questions on the web):
Errors:
Error while trying to run project: Unable to start debugging.
and
Error while trying to run project: Unable to start program '....\PlayKontrol.exe'
Try upgrading your Visual Studio to Service pack 1, if you haven't already.
Did you restarted your computer? You never know how windows will react to that :).
Also be sure there aren't any keys stuck, like the ctrl or windows key.
Note that the key does not have to be visually stuck, it can be stuck for visual studio and not for the explorer.
The most common source of sudden problems like this is corruption of one of the data files that vs uses to cache information between builds.
You've tried a clean build, but this won't delete everything. A real clean build is: quit vs, delete bin, obj, debug, release folders, delete all generated files in the root - primarily ncb. Do the same for any locally built libraries that you're project references.
The easiest way to do this is if you have the code in source control, as you can rename away your entire code folder and then force a get of all the source.
You often need to do all of these things in one hit to clear the problem.
Less frequently, a reinstall of vs will sort things out (although this sounds unlikely in your case if it is only one project that breaks)
Also think carefully about anything you might have installed just prior to it failing... And remember that some install effects may not occur until the next reboot so it could be days ago. A particular cause of this are automatic windows updates and trial versions of things like the vs 11 beta.
You might try running the application from outside of VS, but have a line of code that looks like this: Debugger.Launch(); where you want your first breakpoint.
I'm coding an application on C#, and it runs perfectly fine when I click the "Run" button in Visual Studio C# Express 2010. But, when I go to Debug -> Build Solution, after I run the .exe file, it says "XXX.EXE has stopped working..."
I have inserted break-points and commented out chunks of my code, rebuilt the project, and ran again to try to isolate the problem, but I can't figure out what is causing this. The fact that it runs fine in debug mode is strange.
Some things to try:
Check the system Event log for ASP.NET errors.
Try setting the build to Release mode and using Run--no debugging. See if it crashes then. Watch the Output and other windows for any errors during/after the crash. Depending on those results, check that your solution and project properties are correct in both Debug and Release configurations.
You can also build in debug mode, launch it externally, than attach the Visual Studio debugger to the process. But of course if it crashes on startup than that won't work.
You can add Debug.Assert lines to see if you can get one of those to throw.
Wrap your code in a big try/catch and make sure your catch handler somehow reports or logs the full exception for you.
Adding logging would be good idea. You can log to a file or the system event log. I suggest log4net or similar logging tool for that.
I just had this issue and was going to see if I could catch when the error happened via a console window, when I changed my app to console based the program stopped crashing, I commented out all Console writes and set it back into a windows forms app and voila, runs fine now.
-I know its an old post, but its open and unanswered so I think its fair game.
Try adding your application to your Antivirus Whitelist or exclusion list. This is a known problem with McAfee and Avast!
I may be misunderstanding the problem, but if you are trying to run your app from its .exe file (originally located at Visual Studio ####\Projects\ProjectName\bin\x86\Debug\ProjectName.exe), you must make sure that that .exe file is in that original directory. You cannot move it. I ran into a similar problem with XNA projects. If you want to move the.exe file somewhere else, you can create a shortcut to it, but don't ever move it. If you try and run it from a different location, or if you move any of the other files from that directory, you'll get an error message exactly like the one you described.
Also note that some Visual Studio projects (like XNA ones) will not run as standalones. Building the projects doesn't export them into a standalone format, they can only run on computers that have VS and all the projects framework installed, and their .exe file must remain in its original place.
I'm using VS 2008. When ever I make a change in my code and try to compile I get the following error:
Error 7 Unexpected error creating
debug information file 'C:\Documents
and Settings\jbezanson\My
Documents\MyProjects\DispatchBoard\DispatchBoard\obj\Debug\DispatchBoard.PDB'
-- 'C:\Documents and Settings\jbezanson\My
Documents\MyProjects\DispatchBoard\DispatchBoard\obj\Debug\DispatchBoard.pdb:
The process cannot access the file
because it is being used by another
process. ' DispatchBoard
Using Process Explorer, it is always devenv.exe that is locking the file. If I run in Release mode this does not happen. It started 2 days ago when I started a WPF application, and since then it happens with every application I work on.
The only info I could find from Google was referring to a bug in VS 2003.
Anyone else have this problem? How do I fix it? It is getting very annoying having to kill the file handle every time I want to compile.
If you have multiple instances of VS open, close other instances (apart from the one you are trying to compile) - this may resolve the issue.
When I have problems with locked files, I use Unlocker. (If you tried everything and it's not working, try this ;)
In case of broken link, here's a mirror.
Have you tried closing VS, deleting obj folder then restarting VS?
I had the same problem this morning and noticed that I had another project open that had a reference to the one that would not compile or debug. I removed the reference (as I didn't actually need it) and it was fine.
I changed the 'StartUp Project' of my solution to a project without reference to the locked file's project.
This solved the issue for me using VS 2010 SP1.
(Process Explorer said msvsmon.exe (started by devenv.exe) locked the pdb file.
After changing the startup project the processes msvsmon.exe and .vshost.exe disappeared and so did the file handle.)
Alex Clark, thank you for pointing me in the right direction.
The only thing that worked for me is to remove the optimizeCompilations="true" attribute from on the compilation element in my Web.Config file.
Compilation time may be a little longer, but it worked well.
To avoid that problem just open the project properties, go to Debug tab an untick "Enable the Visual Studio hosting process"
I had this issue today. In my case, I had just grabbed the data from my company's source control and instantly hit this issue when I tried to compile the project. The issue ended up being that the \bin folder was set to Read Only. To solve the issue, I just made the folder not Read Only.
I just came across the same problem today. And then I realized what went wrong: I had couple of Visual Studio windows opened at the same time, and one of them was in debug mode.
When I stopped debug mode in that one, the problem was solved.
That happens when you have a "fistfull of VS windows" opened.
Right Click The Folder that contains debug .pdb and uncheck the folders read-only propertys then ok. thats it.
This works for me with web projects in Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web:
Press F5 to begin debugging
"Do you want to execute last successful build?" - hit YES
At this point you could try a request - not sure if this step is necessary
Hit the stop button
Recompile successfully
I have solved a similar problem by adding these lines as a pre-build event:
if exist "$(TargetPath).locked" del "$(TargetPath).locked"
if exist "$(TargetPath)" move "$(TargetPath)" "$(TargetPath).locked"
With proper modifications, it might help your problem.
Since you say you have it on all applications you work on it sounds like a more global problem. You could try and reinit the vs2008 by writing
devenv.exe /setup
Edit: link to command line options
This worked for me. What I done was that close my visual studio and delete the .suo file and then re-open the solution. The locking should be disappeared now. Cheers.
Old topic, but something that worked for me. I had 2 projects in my solution, a class library type project and a windows form project. The windows form project was referencing the compiled binary and not the project itself in my case which was causing the lock. After changing the reference to the class library project, it worked properly.
Not need to restart or delete the file.Deleting will not be possible , you will get error message. Just rename the file and that is enough.
VS2010 will create another file for you as it wont find the origional. :)
I had the same issue from time to time. Usually no problem but once in a while... This particular time, it was impossible to work. I would shut the application down, and even that didn't work most of the time. I saw this post and a person said they had no issues until they started a WPF application. I was playing music (radio station) in the background with Windows 8 "Music" app. I had the idea that it was a Microsoft App built with Visual Studio. Once I stopped playing music, I never encountered the error. If you are reading this, see if you have any Microsoft apps running.
I also had the same issue. Tried all the suggestions above with no luck. I eventually change the Build Configuration from Debug to Release, the solution built...
This problem started occurring for me after changing from Cassini to IIS Express as my platform for debugging.
Cassini was much better than IIS Express but doesn't properly support the Integrated pipeline. IIS Express is hopeless.
This seems to be some sort of race condition in Visual Studio or IIS Express. It is nothing to do with one project locking another project - the locks are coming solely from the activity of the web application's build process.
Anyways, none of the above solutions worked for me. Unlocker doesn't seem to be supported for Windows 8 anymore. So instead I tried LockHunter. What I do is keep the LockHunter app open all day. If I get a complaint about some file being locked I copy and paste the file path into LockHunter then try again. This usually sorts out the problem but sometimes takes a few attempts.