“The debugger cannot continue running the process.

Question

I've been messing with VS 2010 debugging settings, trying to get stepping into the .NET Framework working. Well, I can't get it to work. I've also tried the Reflector VS plugin and that was working at one point.

Then I randomly started getting this error:

This only happens when I have a breakpoint on a line that calls IEnumerable<T>.ToList(). If I try to step-over or step-into on that line where my breakpoint is set, I get this error dialog and my debugging session ends.

If I move the breakpoint to the line below, the debugger makes it past the ToList() call!

I've tried the following to no avail:

• Removing the Reflector plugin.
• Undoing my changes in the Tools > Options > Debugging window (unchecked the option to step into the .NET Framework; unchecked the source server option; checked the just my code option).
• Unchecked Microsoft Source Server in the Tools > Options > Debugging > Symbols window.
• Cleared the symbol cache.

What is going on?

Answer 1

This message will also show up when you're trying to debug a Xamarin solution but you have a class library selected as the startup project instead of your application porject.

Answer 2

Because this was the first place I came to when I searched for an answer, I'll add what I found out.

In my case, I had the debugger set up in the solution to start multiple projects. For some reason this setting was changed by Visual Studio so that no project was starting. Correcting the setting in the solution immediately solved the problem.

The problem was not difficult to solve, but the error message was more than a bit irritating.

Answer 3

Well, typically, this is also the kind of error message you can get in a multi-threads context. In brief, it involves concurrency : make sure that your resource accesses are always secured.

In my case, I got this error message when I forgot to secure resource accesses at some places within my code. To solve this issue, I just had to decorate the critical sections with a lock instruction (on the concerned resource). I hope this will help those who are in this context.