Visual Studio 2010 debug not starting, F5 or click on "Play" not working, not doing anything. Waiting 2-3 minutes solves the issue

Question

I have a relatively simple C# (Framework 4) console application. When I click the "Play" icon or hit F5 (i.e. start the program in debug mode), the icon becomes gray for a second, then goes back to green, but nothing happens. If I wait 2 or 3 minutes and try again, the debug session starts up normally, breakpoints are hit and everything.

Things I have tried without success:

• Cleaning the solution, then rebuilding.
• Renaming the output assembly.
• Restarting Visual Studio.

The only thing that works is just waiting. I don't see any related processes still running during these 2-3mins (svchost, conhost, *.vshost or cmd).

Solution 1

I've seen this problem when my network connection is flakey and I've set the debugger to automatically download symbols from Microsoft's symbol server. It tries for a long time, then times out, then life proceeds. There should be clues in the Output window (where it normally lists all the modules being loaded and whether it got symbols for them).

Solution 2

try this: open Task Manager, go to processes tab and look for process named after your app. if its there just kill the bastard and try to debug again. for me it worked like miracle

Solution 3

Its happened for me.The cause was because i had my project open in 2 times in 2 differents visual studio and one was waiting for me to answers a question in a message box. The message was about files file was modified outside source editor and was asking me if I wanted to load change. Hope it will help some people and sorry for my english.

Solution 4

I my case, it's due to the use of a vshost. I don't clearly understand yet why. It's possibly due to the running platform (a Win7 x64 where I am not - and may not be - administrator) combined with other factors

But I can debug (using F5) if I disable the use of vshost via the "Project Properties > Debug tab > "Enable the Visual Studio hosting process".

Solution 5

This issue can also occur if you disable "Application Experience" service in Windows, as many system optimization sites suggest.

The service can be re-enabled using msconfig or services.msc, this completely solved the issue for me.

View more solutions

Comments

[Diego]

The problem went away on its own, so maybe you were right about this. Thanks.

[Alicia]

My app wasn't in the list of open processes but the MyApp.vshost.exe was there. I killed this process and I could debug again.

[Alex Jorgenson]

I had a similar problem. I had the same solution open in vs2010 and vs2013. vs2013 wasn't waiting on a dialog box, but when I closed vs2013, the debugging worked in vs2010.

[TheLegendaryCopyCoder]

We switched the app from .net 2.0 to .net 4.0. After this change it would not open when launched in debug. The problem was that the 2.0 instance of the ...vshost.exe was still running. After killing that it worked again.

[RHaguiuda]

Thank you very much SharpAffair. This was the cause of my problem.

[emcor]

I had to kill some "Microsoft server" process, then an "vsapp" process (I cannot remember the exact names because the debug is currently working now).

[JYelton]

This was the solution for my issue as well; I had disabled the service as part of an aggressive stance on avoiding Windows 10-related updates.