I am currenlty trying to debug a service, but don't have the code located on the server, since there is alot and moving is not easy.
we are currently having issue with one server, and the only way I can debug the issue is by using dotpeek to decompile the .dlls and shown here #IgalTabachnik
Problem with this is the last step, my breakpoint gives an error and says that sourcecode is not availbale? which i don't get? ... it should be available through dotpeek?
Another things that might be an issue, is that I am debugging a schdule task, and I am not able to attach to a process while starting at the same time.
If you're having problems with dotPeek + symbol server, I do recommend using dnSpy. To do that you need to:
Open dnSpy as an administrator (dnspy-x86.exe or dnspy.exe depending on the target platform)
Load .exe file that contains the code of the service into dnSpy via File->Open
Navigate to the code where you want to put your breakpoint and set it there.
Go to Debug-Attach to process. Since you run dnSpy as an Administrator you should see your service on the list.
Select and attach to the process
Trigger the breakpoint.
debug
dnSpy generates it's own source code and has debugging capabilities so you can do everything in it. Its debugging experience is similar to Visual Studio's but it is not as reach as you can get in VS. Still, it can do its job.
Just as the title asks. I have solution with 5 projects in it. All dlls are connected with each other and whenever I start debugging, I can freely debug any of them. I'd like to add a separated project and access it's object by using reflection only (no references between the rest and 6th proj at all). Can I make it attach automatically to the debugger? I'm aware of function 'attach to existing process' but that's manual job.
You don't need anything special. Make sure you have pdb file next to the dll for that separate project, have source code locally matching to the version used to build that project, and possibly turn off "my code only" in tools -> options -> debug. At that point Visual Studio should pick up debugging information and allow you to set breakpoints and debug normally.
If PDB located somewhere else you can manually point to the PDP via debug->window->modules view by selecting "load symbols" from context menu on module you are interested to debug.
If sources don't match exactly you can instruct VS to use whatever you have also it likely will lead to confusing debugging experience (How does Visual Studio know if the source file matches the original version?).
You can put below line in your debugging dll ,in which function you want to debuge. it automatically ask you to attach with debugger
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch();
I am using VS.NET to attach to a process, the process has a lot of DLL loaded, I built one of the DLL and try to set a breakpoint inside my DLL. I click "New Breakpoint" and type my function name Func_A and checked the "Use Intellisense to verify" box. Then I click OK but the VS.net complains that it can't find the function.
When the process is attached I checked the output of VS.NET, it didn't has a "can't load symbol" message behind my DLL line, so I think it has successfully located my PDB file. I don't know why I can't set the break point.
My project is C# managed project. Note that for all the DLLs, some has debug informations, some don't, but I believe VS.Net has identified my debug informations.
Please suggest other ways to try...
Another question is is there any tool to see the functions that can set breakpoint in an assembly DLL file?
If you see a lot of DLLs loaded then it is likely that you are running the debugger in native mode. It is an option in the Tools + Attach to Process dialog, be sure to pick Managed.
By far the easiest way to avoid trouble like this is to load the source code file and set the breakpoint by clicking in the left rail of the editor window. Also, don't use Attach to Process. Use Project + Properties, Debug tab, select "Start external program" and select the .exe that loads your assembly. You can now start debugging by simply pressing F5. Beware that this option is not available in the Express edition.
Could do with some more details really, but here goes...
Do you have the source for the DLL? If so, just open the code and add the breakpoint wherever you want.
If you don't, then you're pretty much relying on Intellisense which isn't always reliable I've found, particularly if managed C++ assemblies are involved. To help, you could look at the DLLs using Reflector to get the full namespaced function name and try that, ignoring Intellisense.
Using reflector will also let you see if the DLL is obfuscated (if 3rd party).
Hope this helps give you some new ideas of how to tackle it.
K
A C# desktop application (on the Visual Studio Express edition) worked, but then it didn't work 5 seconds later.
I tried the following:
Ensure debug configuration, debug flag, and full debug information are set on all assemblies.
Delete all bin and obj folders and all DLL files related to the project from my entire machine.
Recreate projects causing the problem from scratch.
Reboot.
I have two Windows Forms projects in the solution. One of them loads the debug information, one doesn't. They both refer to the assembly I'm trying to get debug information on in exactly the same way in the project file. Any ideas?
I want to add here, mostly for myself when I come back to review this question, that symbols are not loaded until the assembly is loaded, and the assembly is not loaded until it is needed. If the breakpoint is in a library that is only used in one function in your main assembly, the symbols will not be loaded (and it will show the breakpoint as not being hit) until that function is called.
Start debugging, as soon as you've arrived at a breakpoint or used Debug > Break All, use Debug > Windows > Modules. You'll see a list of all the assemblies that are loaded into the process. Locate the one you want to get debug info for. Right-click it and select Symbol Load Information. You'll get a dialog that lists all the directories where it looked for the .pdb file for the assembly. Verify that list against the actual .pdb location. Make sure it doesn't find an old one.
In normal projects, the assembly and its .pdb file should always have been copied by the IDE into the same folder as your .exe, i.e. the bin\Debug folder of your project. Make sure you remove one from the GAC if you've been playing with it.
Check to make sure that you are not in release but in Debug.
When in debug:
First try rebuilding your project by right mouse click the project > Rebuild
If that doesn't work, try a clean of the project (right mouse click on the project > clean)
If that didn't work check this:
Right mouse click your project
Select [Properties]
Select the [Build] tab
Make sure [Define DEBUG constant] and [Define TRACE constant] are checked
Make sure [Optimize Code] is unchecked
Click the [Advanced] button at the bottom of the Build tabpage
Make sure that [Debug Info:] is set to [full]
Click [OK] and rebuild the project ;-)
(step 7 generates the .pdb files, these are the debugging symbols)
Uncheck the "Enable Just My Code" option in the
Tools/Options/Debugging/General
Just something simple to try - you may have tried it already.
Right click the Solution in solution explorer, click "clean solution", this deletes all the compiled and temporary files associated with a solution.
Do a rebuild of the solution and try to debug again.
I've also had troubles with breakpoints multiple projects in a solution - some compiled as x86, some as x64.
The selected answer led me to fix my problem. But I need to do a few things more:
Even with "Debug" selected in the dropdown:
And in the project Properties > Build:
The Visual Studio was not loading symbols to a specific project. So in that dropdown I select "Configuration Manager" and saw that the settings to my web project was incorrect:
Then I set that to "Debug" and it started to generate the .pdb file.
BUT I need to manually copy the PDB and DLL and put in the folder that VS was looking (here is where the selected answer helped me):
Sometimes, even though it gives you this error, the Breakpoint still gets hit, so just ignore the error.
This happens fairly often in the Views of an MVC web app, i.e. .cshtml.
I was able to fix the error by simply setting the option in the 'Attach to Process' to 'Automatically determine the type of code to debug' option as shown in the attached screenshot.
Simply follow the steps below:
Go to Debug from the menu bar
Click on Attach to Process
Near the Attach to option, click on the Select button
The Select Code Type window will appear
Now select the option Automatically determine the type of code to debug and click the OK button.
Debug > Windows > Modules to see what modules were being loaded put me in the right direction.
In my case IIS Express seemed to be loading a different DLL from the temporary ASP.NET files.
The solution?
Browse to C:\Users\<YOUR USER>\AppData\Local\Temp\Temporary ASP.NET Files\vs
Delete everything in this directory!
Check if your .pbd file is missing in your bin/Debug folder. If it is then go to "Properties" of your project, selected "Build" and then "Advanced" at the bottom. Choose "full" under "Debug info" in the new window that appeared. This was my issue and solved it for me.
In my case "Optimize Code" was checked in my project properties. This caused VS to see my assembly as "not my code", and in turn, it did not load symbols for it.
The solution was to uncheck this.
Try running visual studio as an administrator within windows.
You need to enable "Generate debug info" in compiler settings
I tried everything mentioned above, but nothing worked.
[Clean solution, and check for PDB files etc.]
Even publishing the same solution did not resolve the issue.
Then I went to back to what I usually do to resolve (fool this stubborn Visual Studio)
All I did was to make a deliberate change in code and publish the solution.
Then I reverted the change and published again.
Voila [PDB files rid of evil spirits].. Not a smart resolution, but this did work.. :-|
We found the cause of our problem. This code was using the "CodeBehind" attribute in the Page directive of the .aspx file instead of the "CodeFile" attribute (ASP.NET 2.0 and beyond). After days of desperation, a simple search and replace solved the problem.
Option "Start debugging, Debug + Windows + Modules" does not exist in Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2013 edition.
Unchecking "Use Managed Compatibility Mode" in Tools Options Debugging fixes this.
Webapplications (IIS Express) only:
Rightclick IIS Express Tray and close the IIS.
Clean Solution
Clean solution and Rebuild
Check the configuration is set to Debug
Make sure that the PDB file is in the Debug folder it self
From Debug menu click Enable All Break points
Make sure you're in Debug and not is release by choosing debug in the dropdown menu like you can see in the picture below.
Then, try cleaning your project by clicking the right button in your mouse on the solution in the solution explorer window and choosing Clean solution.
Then rebuild your solution by clicking the right button in your mouse on the solution in the solution explorer window and choose Rebuild solution
Check are the following two setting the same in Visual Studio:
Right click test project, go to Properties, Build tab, and look at Platform target
Mine are all set to "Any CPU" so x64
On the Main Menu bar, go to Test, Test Settings, Default Processor Architecture
Mine was set to X86
Changing this to X64 to match above setting made the built in Visual Studio menu “Debug Test(s)” work and hit breakpoints that were previously ignored with the message “The breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document”.
Update:
For Visual Studio 2019 the menus have been moved around a bit:
I also had the same issue what I rebuild the whole solution (including refereced projects) in x86( or x64)
Even though I set all of my projects to x86 from Configuration Manager (Build->ConfigManager) some of my projects were not set to x86.
So Just to make sure right click on the project and follow
project -> properties -> Debug Tab, verify Configuration and Platform.
The .dll where I want to stop debugger and the associated .pdb files where copied near the .exe file. Those files had an older date so I thought they weren't updated in the runtime. I manually deleted them, Visual Studio create another pair AND put this new pair near the .exe. Now the breakpoint works!
Maybe Visual Studio cannot copy and REPLACE existing files (.dll and .pdb) near the .exe since there are another there. So if I deleted manually then VS could create new one near .exe.
I think that the root cause of the problem is that the Visual Studio use another file in runtime, no the file from the project, with the stop.
Instead of doing all these things just Close and reopen
Project Properties (then select your build config) > Build Tab > Advanced... > Debug Info (dropdown)
Set to 'all' or 'pdb-only' then rebuild
This took me a while tried other options above and for some strange reason debugging stopped working.
Tool -> Options -> Debugging -> General -> (untick) "Require source files to exactly match the original version" option
I was integrating a C# application with a static library using VS10 - which I'm new to. I wrote a managed code dll to interface them. I could set breakpoints everywhere but the static lib. I got the message described above - no symbols have been loaded for this document. I tried many of the suggestions above. I could see that the symbols weren't being loaded. I finally noticed a check box Configuration Debug, Enable unmanaged code debugging. That allowed me to set breakpoints in the static lib functions.
In my case, I was compiling a class library (DLL). No modules seem to be loaded in Debug -> Modules, so I couldn't even load the symbols manually.
My solution was to add this line to my code:
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch();
Once this code is reached, an exception is triggered and .NET Framework shows a dialog box asking which Visual Studio (i.e. new instance of VS 2008, new instance of VS 2013, etc) you want to use to debug the program. You can choose the existing instance of VS with your project loaded. This will attach the process to your VS session and load all symbols, and now you can debug your project.
Of course, the compilation has to be done using the Debug configuration, not Release.
For an ASP.Net application, check the properties of the site, ASP.NET tab. Ensure that the correct ASP.NET version is selected.
I think the source if this error is, the debug symbols have a hard time surfacing to the solution after building for release.
I tried all the other answers -- generally, regenerating .pdb symbols or checking their location, cleaning and rebuilding project, ensuring active configuration is not Release etc.
What eventually worked for me is right-clicking on the project in solution explorer > Debug > Start new instance.
After trying a bunch of these, the thing that ultimately worked for me was this:
In Debug > Options > General, uncheck Enable Edit and Continue.
this happened to me after copy paste another webservice asmx file into an existing webservice, resulting in the same error when trying to debug the recently added service, to be able to debug I had to start without debug, then attach to the process. its weird but its the only way i found to be able to debug.
I am unable to put a breakpoint.
I am getting the message in the breakpoint like:
"break point will not be currently hit, no symbols are loaded"
there are a few solutions. The problem is that the symbols loaded dont match the executable.
1) Make sure the exe you are attached to have its PDB's in the same directory and its the same version
2) make sure your source code is the same version as well
3) when debugging , open the modules window (debug --> windows-->modules). Choose load symbols and choose your pdb
If your unsure on what to do, then rebuild everything and run
oooops . i didnt read your post properly, i assumed your using visual studio. Anyway, if your not , just find where in your IDE you need to set the symbols and check there.
Another issue is that the breakpoint is that it may be set to a blank line.
Sometimes if I have another instance of Visual Studio open as well as the one I'm trying to debug with, it plays up, especially if I've been debugging in that other one.