Visual Studio 2008 crashes horribly

Question

Hi all,

This has happened to me 3 times now, and I am wondering if anyone is having the same problem. I am running Visual Studio 2008 SP1, and hitting SQL Server 2005 developer edition.

For testing, I use the Server Explorer to browse a database I have already created. For testing I will insert data by hand (right click table -> show table data).

I can do this for a week without problems, but sometimes my computer will crash when the stars are aligned. It doesn't hang, it doesn't blue screen, I see the bios boot screen .2 seconds after I enter some value in a new row that hasn't been saved yet. I have never seen a crash like this, where it reboots instantly. I think it may happen when I enter something that violates a database constraint, but I am not sure yet (need a few more crashes to pinpoint it).

Anyone have the same problem? Know of a solution? Too bad VS wasn't written with managed code, eh? :)

UPDATE: I can reproduce it by inserting a duplicate primary key, clicking off the row, clicking OK on the database error notification, then trying to update the primary key again. I agree - it definitely sounds like a hardware or driver issue, but am not really sure how to solve this since this has only happened when doing this 1 particular thing in VS. I am not overclocking either - I am running a normal (single core) 3 Ghz Dell.

Answer 1

Visual Studio 2008 is just an application, no application should be able to cause your machine to reboot like that.

What can cause your machine to reboot like that is drivers and hardware...

Answer 2

Are you overclocking the machine? Reboots like that are a sign that you have a bad overclock, ie. too high, bad voltage settings, bad memory timings.

Answer 3

I have the same apps running on my machine (on Vists32), and have not hit that problem.

Sounds suspiciously like a RAM problem to me, although I had a bad hard drive in a test server cause similar problems too, it even fried the motherboard, but most often this sort of thing is RAM.

Answer 4

Test your memory, it's the most likely cause of your reboots.

Answer 5

Not to just jump on the bandwagon, but in the past 15 years every instance of this type of situation I have come across has been caused by hardware failure.

Good news is at least that is often eaiser to fix.

Are you able to swap the entire box out, even if only for a few weeks? Often I really don't care what piece failed -- I just yank the whole thing and sort it out later.

Joe

Answer 6

Just so you know, when your computer just snaps right back to the BIOS boot screen with no blue screen or other crash data, this is called a "triple fault" Basically, there was an exception (on a hardware level) whose exception handler triggered an exception whose exception handler triggered an exception. This is almost always a hardware issue since operating systems tend to be VERY careful in the double fault handler not to trigger an exception.

Needless to say, it could be a software problem, but I would check your RAM, CPU and motherboard for potential issues. I had a dell which was doing this fairly randomly with Vista and a new mobo/CPU from dell solved it perfectly.

EDIT: just to note, it can be very hard to convince dell that it is indeed a hardware issue, but stick with it and eventually they'll cave and fix it for you.

Answer 7

I am not having a crash per se' but when I attept to run the group expert in crystal reports VS2008 hangs and can only be closed by using the task manager.

Answer 8

I'm experienced (read: old) enough to know that this SHOULD be a hardware issue. But...

Another developer and myself at the company where I'm currently working installed VS2008 last week, and now we're both seeing this problem. Every now and then, about once a day, when using the IDE the machine will reset as if someone had pushed the reset switch. (The reset button is not expoesed on these machines.)

We have identical hardware (Dell Optiplex GX620, 2GB RAM, WinXPsp2) as do the other ~20 developers here. The other staff use VS2005. We are the only ones having the problem. The machines are stock (it's a stodgy corporate environment) and well-maintained.

So, while this shouldn't be related to VS, it's an awful lot of circumstantial evidence.

For what it's worth, I run VS2008 at home with no issues.

Answer 9

Do use Symantec anti-virus? I had a situation with a new machine where just pressing the ALT-TAB combination would cause my machine to spontaneously reboot about 50% of the time. When Windows restarted it said I had experienced an issue related to a driver.

I mentioned it to our IT guy and he said that it was Symantec and that he had an update that would fix it. Needless to say it really felt like a hardware issue to me, so I was more than skeptical. But he updated my Symantec install and the issue went away!

Try disabling your anti-virus to see if it goes away for a while. And if it does, see if there is an update from your anti-virus vendor

Answer 10

To check the status of your RAM or Hard drives use UBCD (link)

Answer 11

http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=329016 http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/winforms/thread/879ab314-07b2-484e-989c-5661e5bc234a/ https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=331888

I had the same problem early 2008. I believe it was a video driver problem. That a data table in a window could crash windows this way is amazing. There have been so many reports of this that I don't think it's hardware related. Microsoft won't accept it as a bug since they can't reproduce it. Still a bug though.

Answer 12

In house visual Studio 2008 debugger was crashing. Symantec was the culprit. Removal of Symantec services resolved that problem for this system. Thought this might help other developers that see strange crashes in VS2008 try disabling Symantec AV and stopping services on boot.

Answer 13

The below url helped us solve our problem of VS 2008 crash. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/500696/why-does-visual-studio-crash-opening-aspx-with-mvc-rc1.

Answer 14

I have the exact same problem (which lead me to this thread). I had it with VS2005 connecting to a remote SQL2005 server and I still have it with VS2008 connectng to a remote SQL2008 server. It does seem random and I notice the table I am trying to manipulate goes through some sort of refresh right before it happens. Not the whole screen just a little wiggle in the data table. I am using a Dell laptop at 1.66 Ghz, XP, 1 G RAM. Its extremely bothersome.