Unable to automatically step into the server. The debugger failed to stop in the server process

Question

I receive the following error when attempting to Step Into a process using F11 in Visual Studio 2008 Team System:

"Unable to automatically step into the server. The debugger failed to stop in the server process."

I have searched pretty long and hard on the internet and the most relevant message I found was http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/65004e38%28v=VS.90%29.aspx. Unfortunately, this did not help. All signs are pointing that my ASP.NET setup is incorrect, but it's the IIS environment that ships with VS2008 Team System so I didn't make any figuration changes.

The answer to this question, which sounds like it might have fixed my solution is no longer an active link: Unable to automatically step into the server when debugging WCF. Does anybody know how I can jump into and fix this problem?

Solution 1

This took me 3 days and no less than 5 people looking at the problem to solve; although I'd like to report the exact problem I'm still left to speculate. However, I am no longer getting this error when I do the following:

I opened the .cs file of the base class my service derived from within my Testing solution. I set a break-point in the constructor of this base class. Because the base class wasn't within the solution of either my web service nor my test solution (it was simply referenced), VS2008 was unable to break into this .cs file.

The solution was rather moronic. I opened the base class.cs file within my Testing solution (the file only, not the solution). I set a break-point in the constructor class, and I was then able to step-into all other files from there. Once I was able to successfully set a break-point and stop the debugger in the base class within my actual Test solution, I was able to continue debugging as I would normally expect.

My only conclusion to the root cause of this problem is that VS2008 is retarded. I'm sorry it's not much of an answer, but this is how I was able to resolve the issue which sunk over 30 hours of time.

Solution 2

This could be because the debug not reaching to your break point there may be some error occurring before it.Try add break point in the base class constructor.

Solution 3

I know this is an old question, but I encountered a similar issue and the problem was that I was in Release mode rather than Debug mode. Changing to Debug mode solved the problem. I'm using VS 2010.

Solution 4

this problem can occur if you have another solution opened and running (another instance of visual studio).

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