Visual Studio 2008 - Stuck while running, says "unable to break execution" when I try to debug

Question

Hi all. I'm running a C# program on Visual Studio 2008 It freezes at some point, and when I try to pause for debugging, VS2008 freezes also. when I close the program console window it pops up a "unable to break execution" message box. When could be the cause of this?

Thanks Roey

Answer 1

It's really hard to tell without some more info.

A few things to try:

1. Try using ADPlus to get some richer information about the hang.
2. Try running detached and then attaching.
3. Try running detached and then attach from windbg.
4. Try disabling all your VS plugins.

Answer 2

I had similar problem running VC 6.
Using windbg didn't help as it also got hanged?!
Eventually I used kd (kernel debugger). Then when the machine hanged, KD immediately reported some driver (a backup tool) had an issue. Disabling that driver got the strange hang issue resolved.

Tal.