Debug Techniques: Visual Studio 2008 Process fatal crash after debug of WPF application.

Question

I have a relatively large C#/WPF Visual Studio 2008 solution that I am trying to test and synchronize across 2 developer's computers. On my computer, I am able to build and debug (run) the project successfully without errors.

On the second computer, I am able to build the solution without any errors. When I attempt to run the solution, Visual Studio starts the process but about 3 seconds later the entire development platform exits. Before it exits I briefly see one of our .xaml files opened by visual studio with a yellow 'unhandled exception' box pop-up on a certain line number. I'm currently contacting the part of my company who is responsible for implementing the functionality of that xaml file.

This raised a bigger issue in my mind: How can you troubleshoot an issue when Visual Studio is immediately exiting after attempting to run a program?

The Visual Studio 2008 crashes when starting to debug post may also be helpful. I'm trying those solutions now.

Answer 1

Run devenv/debugexe to debug your exe. When an unhandled exception occurs, in the debug menu, select "save as dump", then visit http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio to open a bug report and attach the dump file after creating the report.

Answer 2

We found that executing the three following commands helped to fix our problem:

devenv.exe /ResetSettings
devenv.exe /ResetSkipPkgs 
devenv.exe /Setup

This was suggested in another stackoverflow post here helped us to determine that it was a plugin, AccuRev's Visual Studio plugin, that was causing the issue.

The issue also appears to be a "known issue" with a hotfix from Microsoft, documented here.

VS2008 SP1: In Visual Studio 2008 SP1, having windows in non-default locations, for example after docking and undocking windows, when switching between debugging and designing or switching to/from full screen, can result in a crash of the Visual Studio IDE.

Thanks for your help!