Visual Studio Hacks

Debug a Failing Application #42

Chapter 5, Debugging

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167

HACK

Windows Forms JIT Debugging

When you first try JIT debugging with a Windows Forms application, it

probably won’t work. By default, Windows Forms will display a dialog that

gives you the ability to see the details of the exception, continue, or quit, but

not the ability to attach a debugger to the process. To enable JIT debugging

with Windows Forms, you will need to add a configuration setting either to

the app.config of your application or, if you want to enable JIT debugging

for all Windows Forms applications, to the machine.config. To enable JIT

debugging, you need to add the following element inside the

<config-

uration>

element:

<system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />

This will enable JIT debugging either for the application (if you added it to

the app.config) or for all Windows Forms applications on your machine (if

you added it to the machine.config).

If your application does not already have an app.config, you

will need to create one by right-clicking on the project,

selecting Add New Item, and then selecting the application

configuration file from the list of files.

If you want to modify the machine.config file to enable JIT debugging for all

Windows Forms applications, the file can be found in the following direc-

tory:

%SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\machine.config

The machine.config file actually already has this ...