I have a rather large .NET 2.0 solution (151 projects) in Visual Studio 2008. Often times when I do a build (even for just one project) in VS I get an error saying that it can't copy one of my DLL assemblies to the output directory because it is in use. I don't have any other processes running in the background or existing debug sessions going that would be using this assembly. If I open up Process Explorer and do a search for this assembly name Visual Studio (devenv.exe) comes up as the only result. Looking at the results Visual Studio has my assembly loaded as a DLL for some reason. Closing the solution and reopening it doesn't solve the problem. I have to completely exit out of VS altogether to get around this issue which is quite disruptive. Does anyone have any idea what is going on? I'm running on Window 7, I don't think I saw this issue on Windows XP.
I am running Visual Studio 2008 Version 9.0.30729.1 SP. I'm also running ReSharper 6 if that matters.
Does anyone have any idea what is going on? I'm running on Window 7, I
don't think I saw this issue on Windows XP.
I run into this problem all the time on Windows XP and its not even localized to Visual Studio 2008. What always works for me is I simply clean all solutions, this gets rid of any file that might be in my system's memory, because of Visual Studio.
Visual Studio keeps any your references in memory, so when one of those references is updated, Visual Studio has to release it from memory. If it really happens more then "once in awhile" then you might look at trying to reduce the number of solutions in your project.
Use the following command and place it in "Pre Build Events" of visual studio:
if exist "$(TargetPath).locked" del "$(TargetPath).locked"
Hope this would help you.
Try to disable the hosting process:
Open an executable project in Visual Studio. Projects that do not produce executables (for example, class library or service projects) do not have this option.
On the Project menu, click Properties.
Click the Debug tab.
Clear the Enable the Visual Studio hosting process check box.
Kill process VBCSCompiler.exe and rebuild.
I would guess that the dll is being used by the (ProjectName).vshost.exe process. You might try killing that process and see if that works. Probably not the best thing to do, but it might be easier than restarting VS.
I would try the "Clean Solution" option before you build. This can clean up any extraneous temp files that could be hanging around from a program crash.
I have no idea about why this works, but I had the same problem and when I changed the Starting Project to the project I wanted to build everything worked again.
When I change the Startup project again to the right one I cannot build the other project anymore due to the file being in use, so looks like a bug at the Visual Studio IDE.
Related
Recently, Visual Studio 2013 started hanging again when trying to debug/trace an ASP.NET web site. The site was created with WebMatrix 3 but I don't think that is relevant.
VS2013 opens the web site Solution. It takes a really long time to load up. Once it does load up and I run the project, it hits my first breakpoint and then the IDE Window quickly shows "(not responding)" in the title bar and the IDE is now hung.
This happened to me a long time ago and the root cause was needing to set the "use 64-bit IIS" option as indicated by this SO post:
Visual Studio 2013 crashes and restarts every time I run my test solution
But I triple-checked and I do have the 64-bit option checked. What can I do to fix this?
What worked for me was resetting visual studio. I got the suggestion from http://www.vosseburcht.com/?p=69
See this blog in the issue. It basiclly says to make sure "show all files" is selected in the solution and check for any folders that don't belong that are not part of your project/solution.
The problem resurfaced again a few days later and I finally figured out the problem with my uncooperative debugger. I have a folder containing approximately 20,000 images that are not included in the Visual Studio web project but are sitting in a directory in the web site. I had turned on "Show All Files" in Solution Explorer to add some script files into the project. When "Show All Files" is off, F5 (Start Debugging) works like champ. When "Show All Files" is on, Visual Studio becomes unresponsive. In reality it is not "frozen" but simply taking a very long time to process those 20,000 image files.
For me, it was a folder created called backup, which was a backup of the site (created by VS). I deleted the folder in question and the site loaded for debugging.
It might be caused be some extensions in Visual Studio, I was facing a similar problem when degbugging asp.net websites. Try running VS in Safemode: devenv.exe /Safemode. In my case it was caused by Multilingual App Toolkit extension, after uninstalling it, debugging ASP.NET websites works once again.
In my case, I was able to solve it by running it as an Administrator!
Don't know why, couple of days back it was working fine, suddenly it started to freeze when trying to debub web app!
Hope it helps someone!
BTW: I am running VS2013 Ultimate, with Update 4
In my case it's the IntelliTrace that causes problem. I need to disable it https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264948(v=vs.100).aspx
I have the same situation and "solved it" in a very particular way: Rebuild the solution and run it without debugging (Control + F5), then go back and debug it the normal way.
I was having a similar issue, and I found the following error in Windows Application Event Log that corresponded to the problem:
Application: PowerShellToolsProcessHost.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.Runtime.Serialization.InvalidDataContractException
...
So I removed PowerShell Tools for Visual Studio extension, and the issue went away. I am using Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 Update 5.
I had this problem while writing an Excel add-in.
Not being a web app I was pretty sure that checking the 64 bit IIS Express option would make no difference, but it did!
I have no idea why, but it runs in debug ok now :)
I had to install Windows Management Framework 4.0
My solution was to remove all the .bak backup files generated by DevExpress ProjectConverter when I had upgraded to the new DevExpress version.
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.
After debug, in about 90% of the cases I can't rebuild my solution, because VS keeps the file handle of the old .exe (can't copy the new exe from obj\Debug to bin\Debug). I know that it's VS's file handle for sure, since I checked it with the Unlocker Assistent. Also, I tried the workaround with calling the default namespace the same es the executable, but no luck. Any ideas?
PS: Running it on Windows XP.
Seems to be a bug in VS since 2005. A google search will show MANY posts about this problem that Microsoft has yet to address. It hits me every so often as well when the IDE won't let go of a dll. Unfortunately a restart of VS is required :(
I have inherited this c# solution that includes an ix installer project (a bunch of .wxs files and some c# files). The uninstaller is generating an error message.
I haven't a clue what this installer project is. What are the .wxs files for? I can guess (and have successfully been able to fix some issues with the installer. I have figured out how the custom actions are set up and called etc.
But the bug in question would be so much easier to debug if I could step through it in the debugger - how do I do that?
Generally: How do I hook up the Visual Studio 2008 debugger with the installer project ("Set as Startup Project" is not an option in the Solution Explorer, tried that).?
Specifically: How do I debug the uninstaller? The way I see it, the uninstaller will have to use a dll not residing in the project folder (where?) and thus not really known to Visual Studio at all...
Maybe this article on MSDN will help.
I haven't done it recently but I think that if you add anywhere in the code Debugger.Break() statement, you will get a prompt during the install to debug the process and then you can step through it.
One of the pages that look promising is the WixWiki.
I found this on the wikipedia page for WiX.
My Visual Studio seems to be freezing/lagging when I open a existing project. I have added NHibernate framework into my code and it seems to lag my computer (at least that's what I think). When I open other projects, I do not lag or freeze at all. The freeze is about 3- seconds to a minute, then it will open my project and it will just act very slowly, it might take 20+ seconds just to switch classes an 20+ more seconds just to type a single character into visual studios.
I was wondering if anyone has had this problem before. If so how did you fix it?
I can't really work on my code until this is fixed. Oh also, when is save the code, it freezes for a good minute or two also.
You can see exactly what VS is doing at any given moment, if you attach a debugger to the devenv.exe process and hit Break when it hangs. Then load the symbols from Microsoft Symbols server and show the call stack for the VS main thread.
I wrote a very detailed article about how to debug crashes and hangs here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/kirillosenkov/archive/2008/12/07/how-to-debug-crashes-and-hangs.aspx
From the call stack it should be obvious what is causing the delay.
For me, removing the suo file (from the v14 sub directory) solved the problem...
Had the same problem. Closed Visual Studio 2010, opened again Running as Administrator, went to Extension Manager, uninstalled Nuget Package Manager, restarted Visual Studio 2010 running as regular user, opened problem solution, solution opened fine.
Nuget Package Manager seems to be the cause. My problem solution is using EF 4.3 Code First which interacts heavily with the Package Manager Console, but that may just be a coincidence.
As answer by Visual Studio 2015 Freezing White Loading Solution delete the .vs hidden directory solved the issue for me.
I am using Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition.
I had a hunch that something had been corrupted with one of my NuGet packages, and completely deleted the \packages subfolder and its contents. When I reopened the solution, all projects loaded successfully without hanging.
From there, I restored the previously deleted packages from the NuGet Package Manager Console and I was back up and running.
What, if any Add-ins do you have installed?
Edit:
One suggestion I would have then is to systematically disable each of your add-ins and see if performance changes and if it does research the culprit and see if there any updates available.
Uninstall any MS Enterprise Framework addin's you may have.
Delete the VS temp directory (and the Windows one).
Do you use TFS? Perhaps the server is a bit sleepy, that will make it freeze for a few minutes, but is ok afterwards.
For me, a chkdsk /F /R (which will prompt you to restart) and about 30 minutes of company time fixed this issue.
I think a few improperly closed instances of Visual Studio may have attributed to the issue.
I had same problem. Delete following folder.
C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio
My local files somehow became corrupted for one project, fortunately I didn't have any pending changes so rather than run chkdsk I just deleted the folder and checked out the solution from source control again.