Can't start debugger in VS2012 RC

Question

Configuration:

• Windows 7, 64 bit
• Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2012 RC Version 11.0.50522.1 RCREL
• Running VS in administrator mode
• The VS solution contains a web application, with target: .NET Framework 4.

When I press F5, the solution builds... and nothing else happens.

• Happens with both IIS or the VS Dev Server.
• Happens with Platform Target of "Any CPU" or "x86"

If instead, I use the Debug / Attach to Process... menu, after a few seconds, I get:

• "Debugger is Busy" - Debugger is performing a remote operation that is taking longer than expected. This dialog stay until I click "Terminate" and confirm it.
• Then this dialog appears: "Microsoft Visual Studio" "Unable to connect to the Microsoft Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor named [COMPUTER NAME]. The network connection to the Visual Studio Remote Debugger has been closed."
• After clicking OK, the 'normal' "Attach to Process" window finally shows up. In it, the list of "Available Processes" is empty.

Any suggestions or clues?

The main points that I wonder about:

• Why is the list of processes empty? It is not surprising that the debugger does not work if it cannot see any processes.
• Why is it trying to do "remote" debugging, when it is just accessing the local computer?

(Cross posted on social.msdn)

Answer 1

For what it's worth, I found that I received this error message when I had an entry missing in my hosts file. I am using local domain aliases and the one I was trying to debug with wasn't in hosts. Adding the missing entry solved the problem for me.

Answer 2

I had the same problem in VS 2012 (not the RC, but the final release) using a VS 2010 project. It would build fine, but the debugger would not start. So, I modified the solution file:

Changed "Format Verion 11.00" to "Format Verion 12.00" And changed "# Visual Studio 2010" to "# Visual Studio 2012"

It's a workaround for now until my company upgrades its projects to VS 2012.

Answer 3

Just copy all dte*.olb files, from C:\Program Files (X86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSEnv to C:\Program Files X86\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE.

From https://mycodepad.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/visual-studio-2012-4-run-as-administrator-the-application-cannot-start-error/

Answer 4

I just closed and reopened VS. This seemed to fix my problem