Visual Studio 2005 Debugging Tip

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Have you ever been debugging an ASP.NET 2.0 application and you see "First Chance Exception XXX" in the Output Window while you are putting the app through its paces in Debug mode, but the IDE never breaks on any of them?

And you are saying to yourself, How can I debug this thing if all I see is cryptic messages in the Output Window but no source code, line numbers or anything else?

What you want to do is tell the Debugger to Break on all Managed Code Exceptions. Here's how:

1) In the IDE, up top, hit "Debug" and Choose "Exceptions". You will see a dialog with a Treeview (collapsed) the second node of which reads "Common Language Runtime Exceptions". At the right will be a checkbox. Check this checkbox. (If you want, you can expand the treenode and pick and choose which kinds of exceptions you want the debugger to break on when thrown). You need to check this (these) because the default behavior is "continue".

In fact, you can even add custom exceptions that aren't in the list, that you want the debugger to break on. CTRL-ALT-E brings this dialog up.

Exceptions Dialog- Click to Enlarge

2)Now when you get an exception, everything will come to a screeching halt and you'll break into the debugger. Ain't technology grand?
Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Michael Freidgeim11:17 PM

    Do you have any ideas why my VS 2005 doesn't show "Exceptions" menu option under Debug menu?

    Fortunately "Ctrl-Alt-E" opens the window, so I just need to remember shortcut.

    ReplyDelete

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