Debugger not automatically connecting to WebDev.WebServer40.EXE

Question

All of a sudden my installation of Visual Studio 2010 has stopped automatically connecting to the WebDev.WebServer40.EXE meaning by default I cannot debug any of our RIA Service calls within our silverlight project.

If I manually attach the process it works perfectly but this gets triesome when constantly debugging a number of changes. I've tried just about everything I can think of. Changing the startup projects and pages hasn't solved it. Copied the VS settings from another working machine over the identical project and that does nothing.

The only thing which solved it straight away was using Firefox as the default browser, not a good permanent solution but seems to narrow the cause down to IE9. But again my version of this is identical to the other machine in the office. Have then tried clearing the IE cache etc but that's made no difference.

Has anyone come across this before or knows how to solve it?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi Flibblepip,

Thank you for posting in the MSDN forum.

Not very sure whether it is the VS debugger tool issue, would you mind letting us know more information? Did you get any error message like “WebDev.WebServer.Exe has stopped working” when you debug it?

Do you mean that it worked well in another PC?

If you get the error like “WebDev.WebServer.Exe has stopped working”, I suggest you check Roahn’s reply in this thread “WebDev.WebServer.exe has stopped working Error Message When Trying To Debug”, I think you could get useful information.

If other PC worked well, to make sure that it is not the VS issue, I suggest try to repair the VS and check it again.

Best Regards,

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Jack Zhai [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 2

Hi Flibblepip,

I am writing to check the status of the issue on your side. 
What about this problem now?
Would you mind letting us know the result of the suggestion?

Best Regards,

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Jack Zhai [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 3

Hi, No change here. I've tried repairing Visual Studio to no avail. I'm at the point of considering a reload of the whole PC as this is an infurating issue but don't have the time for that at the moment. You just don't think about attaching the debugger every time you press F5 and by the time you hit a problem it's too late to attach and you have to start all over again.

I would have hoped this was just a setting in Visual Studio as I fail to see why else the same project would differ from one machine to another.

Answer 4

Hi Flibblepip,

Sorry for my reply no help.

As you said, if possible, maybe you could try to reload your PC and check it.

To make sure that it is not related to your VS settings, one idea is that you could copy the settings file from the another PC to this pc which has this issue, and then use this setting file in your VS and check it.

Best Regards,

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Jack Zhai [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 5

No we've copied the VS settings previously as well.

We've now sorted it but really have no idea why. We use source control for all our projects and in this projects case it was saying there were no differences between my version and the copy on the server/other machines. However before taking the time to reload the whole PC I decided to delete the project, got it out of source control again and in the new version the problem had gone away. So I can only assume it's a setting in a file in the project but have no idea which one as the files should have been identical to the working version.

Answer 6

Hi Flibblepip,

However before taking the time to reload the whole PC I decided to delete the project, got it out of source control again and in the new version the problem had gone away.

I don’t find any settings would impact it in VS, but as you said that if you got it in the new version, it works well, I make your reply as the answer.

Have a nice weekend,

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Jack Zhai [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us