DebugBreak not breaking

Question

I'm writing a class in C++ that I cannot debug by using F5. The code will run from another "service" that will invoke it. In the past I've used __debugbreak() and when I got a window telling me that an exception was thrown selected to debug it.

Recently I've updated to windows 7 and it kept working for a while.

Today when I've tried to debug a piece of my code instead of shown the regular dialog that tells me that VSTestHost has stopped working and enable me to to debug the application I got a different dialog suggesting I send the data to microsoft for analysis.

Does anyone knows how can I fix this issue so I'll be able to debug my code?

Solution 1

Finally I found the cause of the issue. It's a Vista/Win7 cause:

1. Open The Action center control
2. Goto Action Center settings
3. Goto Problem Reporting Settings
4. Choose "Each time a problem occurs, ask me before checking for solution"

Although this is more of IT solution/question I've been plagued with this problem all day and wanted to share the solution with other developers who encounter this problem.

Solution 2

I finally found the solution for Windows 10 here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/enabling-postmortem-debugging

And also: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/Debug/configuring-automatic-debugging

To enable automatic debugger launch, you should add a registry value:

• key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug, value Auto = 1 (of type REG_DWORD)

The configured debugger is set the by the value Debugger (type REG_SZ); a Visual Studio installation sets this to:

"C:\WINDOWS\system32\vsjitdebugger.exe" -p %ld -e %ld

Note that on 64 bit OS this only works for 64 bit executables. To enable the same behaviour in 32 bit executables set the same values in this key:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug

Solution 3

In that case...

http://community.codesmithtools.com/blogs/blake/archive/2009/06/03/tips-amp-tricks-debugging-codesmith-on-microsoft-windows-7.aspx

Here is the quick overview of what you need to-do to enable debugging on a Microsoft Windows 7 machine:

Update the Just-In-Time debugger setting DbgJITDebugLaunchSetting. The setting is found in the registry at [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework].
Set the value of DbgJITDebugLaunchSetting to 2. If you are using a 64bit operating system then you must also set the same key (DbgJITDebugLaunchSetting) in this folder [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework] to 2. If you run into any issues try running CodeSmith Studio and Visual Studio as an administrator. Now when CodeSmith enters a break point you will see something like this:

Comments

[Ferruccio]

Sometimes that can be a problem because by the time you attach to the process your code has already gotten past that point. In those cases I find it helpful to put a Sleep(10000) right before the point I want to break. Gives me just enough time to attach to the process.

[Jakub Krampl]

I'm not looking for another way to debug - I want ot fix the current why I'm debugging my code

[Jakub Krampl]

Good find but I've managed to solve the issue without changing the value of the keys to 2 (by default its 16)

[mlt]

It definitely stopped reporting on Win 8, but it doesn't offer to start debugger either. It just says Error 1067: The process terminated unexpectedly.

[Emerick Rogul]

This helped me on Windows 10 (specifically the step to add "Auto"). Thank you!

[ceztko]

These settings are for CLR debugging only. The question is about native C++ code.