How can I attach a debugger to my own .Net Winform application to set breakpoints, watch variables and inspect problems on client machine?
Long story:
I have to figure out the problems with respect to client on the phone (remotely) for my current job. But I can't even find the correct form.
We have nearly 50 projects and they usually have 20 or more forms and use some 3rd party APIs. Client request may have related to crashed application or results are calculated incorrectly. So I have to figure out problem on the phone.
My idea is create a base winform, make all forms to extend that form, attach a debugger, activate that debugger with a key stroke on the client machine. Then I need to see the code, set breakpoints, watch variables and use something like immediate window to execute codes. That way I don't need to change code because of inheritance.
How can I achieve this?
PS : We have fairly good update procedure. So updating the application on the client is easy.
PS2: I will update a Debug build for my purpose.
PS3: VS Remote Debug is not an option.
PS4: Eurokelog or anything like that is not an option.
PS5: We use screen sharing application so I can view client desktop or server.
Related
I have a very strange situation here with CEF Sharp x86 (67 with latest cef.redist 3.3497.1841), but originally reported with v49. It's very crazy, so I'm just looking, maybe somebody have stumbled upon anything similar. We host WPF ChromiumWebBrowser inside WinForms UserControl (via ElementHost) and it's running inside 3rd party application, with which it does not interact in any way (so it's a plugin to this host application). For about 100 or so users everything is ok, but for a single person this happens: webpage loads and displays correctly, but the ChromiumWebBrowser.IsBrowserInitialized flag is always false.
Now, by 'user' I don't mean Windows account, just a user in totally unrelated 3rd party application, logging-in against 3rd party userid/password verification - unrelated to any windows settings. So as crazy as it sounds we've tried it on multiple computers on multiple windows accounts, using different user ids for the application, and the result is still the same - for this one userid there is a problem, for others - all ok.
I wonder if anyone has had such crazy experience with CEF. I'm betting on some bug in .NET layer, as the actual browser works fine - webpage is rendered, you can browse normally. Also this has sth to do with CEF run as plugin to this exact 3rd party app - if I run a test winform app with same setup - user control -> element host -> WPF ChromiumWebBrowser, all is ok. CEF log is not much help, no errors other than in OK situation.
I'm not attaching any code or logs, I don't think it'd be helpful in this case. Just for more background the plugin has been around for almost 3 years with not a single bug reported, except this case. Just to make it clear - I need this flag to be true to be able to inject JS calls into the plugin.
Ok, so it turned out to be a case of opening 2 instances of browser within single process. One browser window was initializing and working fine, second was was displaying page, but reporting 'not initialized'. It became clear only when I went to customer and actually saw the scenario, because they did not report that they opened 2nd instance. I this case, they don't need 2nd instance, so that was the fix, maybe there is an error I our code, I'll follow up this issue once we do more through analysis.
I've got stumped by problem during development of my ASP.NET application.
I cannot debug it any more after attaching debugger to a process. Recently I was changing some windows features and checking IIS settings but as far as I remember I was able to debug my app till today.
Ok so what's going on.
I attached debugger and nothing happens no symbols are getting loaded (I am absolutely sure that Build -> Configuration and stuff looks correct in terms of debug etd). That symbols are getting generated and that app is working on dlls which I compile the only problem is that no matter what I do - symbols are not getting loaded.
I've got 2 traces which could lead me to the cause 1st:
The first one is strange application type when attempting to attach a debugger using visual studio. Normally all other apps are using Managed (v4.0......),x64 (I am right now talking about Window with all process running on computer Debug -> Attach -> type column)
but this app for some reason is using Script, Managed (v4.0......),x64
The other one is that when I've debugger attached to the application and open Debug -> Windows -> Modules the only one that is listed is:
**Script Code (Microsoft Active Server Pages) Script Code (Microsoft Active Server Pages) N/A N/A Symbols loaded. Script Code (Microsoft Active Server Pages) 1 [29896] w3wp.exe**
Which kinda looks like some precompilled stuff. (I do not recall enabling any kind of recompilation).
I've tried recreating app on IIS along with switch app pool yet it's still the same. What's even more after checking diff of web config I don't see any kind of change which could lead to such behavior.
I was working with this application for like 8 months and never had a problem like this.
Thanks in advance for your tips.
Kind Regards.
EDIT:
Images
Modules
I've had the exact same issue and could solve it by moving the site to a different application pool. The target application pool already had an application assigned which I could debug (showed up as Managed (v4.0......),x64 in process selector) and once I moved the problematic site over, I could also debug that site.
I didn't figure out what exactly causes the behavior in the first application pool but maybe this helps someone to quickly solve this problem until someone comes up with a better analysis.
I've got an issue with the focus management in WinRT. The issue is specific for the application startup. Let me share the example of it:
If during the startup I change the focus (for instance I can start selecting some text in a browser), the runtime will decide that it doesn't need to show the application. The application is being started in a 'hidden mode'. It means that I do not see the UI, but I still can find it in process explorer.
So what I need here is to make the application be active in all possible cases. I tried to use several native functions such as ShowWindow, SetActiveWindow, SetForegroundWindow, but without any success.
I also noticed that any WinRT app is being started under WWAHOST.exe and mainwindowhandle is 0. The app shows up if I use 'Switch to' option in Process Explorer context menu.
WinRT applications are sandboxed and have very little control on the way the OS handles them, and almost no way to affect the behavior of other applications running on the same host. What I would suggest then is for you to design your application in such a way that it shows some UI as early as possible, then asynchronously you can load any other resources that your application may need.
I'm having trouble with real time debugging of a Windows service on a remote machine. This machine is behind a firewall only accessible through remote desktop. I include Debug.WriteLine statements through my code, in lieu of Console.WriteLine. Not too long ago I ran across an application from Microsoft named Debug View. It has been helpful in debugging Forms and WPF applications but it will not show the Debug.WriteLine statements for a running service. I would be extremely happy if I could see these debug statements. Is there a way to do this?
Note, the project is compiled in debug mode as I can see the debug statements in Debug View during the service installation.
Run Debug View as Administrator, select the Capture menu, then make sure that Capture Global Win32 is checked. That will capture Debug.WriteLine output from your service (and any other service as well). You may want to use a filter to prevent Debug View from displaying output you are not interested in. Consider prefixing your service debug messages with your service name so that you can filter for them.
I have a WPF application that occasionally crashes, and say "not responding". Is there a way to detect if the program is not responding? And if so, restart the WPF application?
This will be a temporary fix until the bugs are fixed.
You could use the Application Recovery & Restart Manager API, which was introduced in Windows Vista. This is an unmanaged (C) API, however there are managed wrappers available in the Windows API Code Pack.
This is a good feature to add to your application anyway, as it provides the user with a nicer experience if (when!) you application crashes. You can even write a callback that persists information about what the user was doing, and then restore that state when the application restarts.
The most basic use of the API would be to just add the following line somewhere in application startup:
ApplicationRestartRecoveryManager.RegisterForApplicationRestart( new RestartSettings( "restart", RestartRestrictions.None ) );
Because this is a temporary fix while you debug the app, one possibility is to cheat and use a bootstrapper/startup app whose sole job is to monitor the problematic app. Start the problematic application via the System.Diagnostics.Process class's Start method, then occasionally monitor the returned Process' Responding property. If not responding, do what you need to do.
It's important that this only be done as a stopgap while you fix the real problem, of course. There are lots of little issues with doing something like this long-term.