debugging VS 2005 prompts an "Operation not supported"

Question

Hi!

I've been debbugging VS 2005 and set the 'Start external program' to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

But after hitting F5 I got this error:

Error while trying to run project: Unable to start program 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

Operation not supported. Unknown error: 0x8013134b.

I can debug successfully if I set it to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

Thanks!

Answer 1

This connect issue might provide some insight into what you are encountering. More explicitly this excerpt:

The problem you are running into is that the VS2005 debugger is not able to debug the CLR v4.0 runtime on which Visual Studio 2010 is depedent. The only way you can debug VS2010 is through native-only debugging (Click the Select... button on the Attach to Process dialog). The only solution for debugging managed code using the native only engine is to make use of the v4 SOS.dll debugging extensions. See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jacdavis/archive/2006/08/25/using-sos-in-visual-studio.aspx for one such description of this capability.

Answer 2

This error occurs when there is a CLR version mismatch between what the debugger is expecting and what is actually running in the debuggee process. Visual Studio 2010 is using CLR 4.0 which is likely causing the problem.

Here are a couple of articles that will help you resolve the problem

• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmstall/archive/2005/01/15/353717.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmstall/archive/2005/11/30/everett-cant-debug-whidbey.aspx