Configure Visual Studio 2010 Remote Debugger

Question

I have installed the Visual Studio 2010 Remote Debugger on a Windows Server 2003 (x86) server, and am attempting to connect to it results in the following error:

Unable to connect to the Microsoft Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor named 'ServerName'. The Visual Studio Remote Debugger on the target computer cannot connect back to this computer. A firewall may be preventing communication via DCOM to the local computer. Please see Help for assistance.

I have checked my Windows firewall setting, and ensured file sharing is enabled on my local machine. I have ensured that DCOM is running on the server, as well as the debugging service. There are no actual firewalls involved that I know of.

What else do I need to change to get this to work?

Answer 1

Here are the steps I took to get remote debugging to work against an ASP.NET app. Not sure if you've done this already, hopefully something might help.

• On my machine (call it DEVMACHINE from now on) I shared out the folder that contained the remote debugger (msvsmon.exe). On my machine, it was located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x86. I called the share msvsmon

• On the server, I opened Windows explorer and navigated to \\DEVMACHINE\msvsmon, and ran msvsmon.exe (This opened the Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor)

• On DEVMACHINE, I started Visual Studio 2010 and opened the solution that represents the application I'm attempting to debug.

• In Visual Studio, clicked Tools > Attach To Process...

• Entered the server name in the Qualifier field, then double clicked on the w3p.exe process that was in the list.

• I then placed a break point in the location I wanted to start debugging

Couple things to note: The code deployed to the server was a Debug Build, the pdb files were there, along with the binaries. I had full admin rights on the server. No tools were installed on the server, I simply ran the exe that was located on DEVMACHINE. I did not have any firewalls between the DEVMACHINE and the server. And, both DEVMACHINE and the server are on the same domain.

Hope that helps.