Visual Studio breakpoints not being hit

Question

I m working with an ASP NET MVC project that seems to be having some issues when attaching to the IIS process  w3wp exe   I m running the solution and IIS 8 5 on my own local machine so I wouldn t think that this has anything to do with our network  What s strange to me is that I m able to hit the breakpoints on any other solution I debug locally   The issue I m having exactly is that the breakpoints turn to red  hollow circles and never get hit  Usually the fix for this is a Clean Rebuild of the solution but this hasn t worked  I ve confirmed the code is being updated by adding  throw new Exception  to a page and ensuring it shows the exception  Again  this problem is only happening with this one solution  Any other solution I run the debugger with works fine  I ve also tried restarting the app pool  the website  IIS  and also my computer    A few of the articles I read mentioned that anti-virus programs can block a remote debugger from accessing the process  However  the entire setup is contained on my local machine so it doesn t sound like that would be the issue  It does concern me a bit though because we recently hired a new IT guy that s been making a lot of changes to everyone s machine    One other point to add that s unique about this web application is the binding in IIS  The binding is     in order to leverage some custom functionality related to subdomains    In the meantime  I ll continue to look for a solution but if anybody has any ideas what may be causing this one solution to not debug properly I d really appreciate it    EDIT  Found a solution that suggested deleting the ASP NET temporary files  No luck

User · Answer

If anyone is using Visual Studio 2017 and IIS and is trying to debug a web site project, the following worked for me:

Attach the web site project to IIS.
Add it to the solution with File -> Add -> Existing Web Site... and select the project from the inetpub/wwwroot directory.
Right-click on the web site project in the solution explorer and select Property Pages -> Start Options
Click on Specific Page and select the startup page (For service use Service.svc, for web site use Default.aspx or the custom name for the page you selected).
Click on Use custom server and write

http(s)://localhost/(web site name as appears in IIS)

for example: http://localhost/MyWebSite

That's it! Don't forget to make sure the web site is running on the IIS and that the web site you wish to debug is selected as the startup project (Right-click -> Set as StartUp Project).

Original post: How to Debug Your ASP.NET Projects Running Under IIS

User · Answer

Go to Visual Studio Menu   Debug -  Attach to Process  And then click the Select button  as in the image below     Then make sure the  Automatically determine the type of code to debug  option is selected  like this

User · Answer

You can t hit breakpoints while attached to IIS process if you haven t logged into your Microsoft account in VS2017

User · Answer

If any of your components are Strong Named  signed   then all need to be  If you  as I did  add a project and reference it from a Strong Named project component  neglecting to sign your new component  debugging will be as if your new component is an external one and you will not be able to step into it  So make sure all your components are signed  or none

User · Answer

One of my projects in my solution was set to Release mode  I changed it back to Debug mode  and the breakpoints are hitting now

User · Answer

My case is not mentioned here  I have to run the web project on a fake domain  settup on IIS and  hosts etc  because of the callbacks from a third party site   I was seeing two w3wp processes in the process list of VS  w3wp exe    User Name  IIS APPPOOL Default app pool  w3wp exe    User Name  IIS APPPOOL svc  I had to to manually attach to second one to be able to debug   So I realised the app pool of my Fake domain in iis is not set to  Default app pool     https   manage accuwebhosting com knowledgebase 2532 How-to-change-application-pool-from-IIS html  As soon as I changed the domain s app pool to the  Default app pool  visual studio started to debug the web app

User · Answer

In my case this solution is useful   Solution  Disable the  Just My Code  option in the Debugging General settings     Reference  c-sharpcorner

User · Answer

I know this is not the OPs issue  but I had this happen on a project  The solution had multiple MVC projects and the wrong project was set as startup    I had also set the configuration of the project s  to just start process debugger and not open a new browser window      So on the surface it looks as if the debugger is starting up  but it does so for the wrong process  So check that and keep in mind that you can attach to multiple processes also    Silly mistake that left me scratching my head for about 30 minutes

User · Answer

Solved  Ended up being an incorrect configuration selected in the debug menu  I had mistakenly switched it to a release configuration that could not load the symbols for the document  Switched it to a debug configuration and the breakpoints hit just fine now    To add on to what Abacus mentioned below  it could also be a web config transform that is messing with your build  In our case  we have Release configurations that remove the debug attribute from the web config s compilation section  Below is a screenshot of an example and Visual Studio s dropdown list of build configurations   NOTE  Also make sure your Platform is correct along with the configuration  In my case  Dev Debug Mixed Platforms does not correctly build the solution but Dev Debug Any CPU will

User · Answer

In my scenario  I ve got an MVC app and WebAPI in one solution  and I m using local IIS  not express    I also set up the sites in IIS as real domains  and edited my host file so that I can type in the real domain and everything works  I also noticed 2 things    The MVC code debugging was working perfectly  Attaching to process worked perfectly too  Just when I was debugging it didn t hit the breakpoint in my API    This was the solution for me   Right click webapi project   properties   Web   Project URL  By default it points to localhost  but since I set up the site in IIS  I forgot to change the URL to the website domain  i e  instead of locahost  it should say http    domain-name

User · Answer

In Visual Studio 2017 you need to make sure you re not in release configuration mode      Open the build menu ddl Click configuration manager Change from  release  to  debug

User · Answer

If none of the above work  double-check your code   Sometimes the reason why the breakpoint appears to not be hitting is due to the block of code containing the breakpoint is not being executed for sometimes inadvertant reasons     For example  forgetting the  Handles Me Load  has gotten me a few times when copying and pasting code       Protected Sub Page Load ByVal sender As Object  ByVal e As System EventArgs      --this block of code will not execute     End Sub    vs      Protected Sub Page Load ByVal sender As Object  ByVal e As System EventArgs  Handles Me Load     --this block executes     End Sub

User · Answer

In my case the actual process was different from the original started process   Usually we bind the local-hosted services through the w3wp exe process  In my case a custom process was used  Changing to that solved the problem   One more thing  change from Release to Debug mode  In release mode PDB files are not getting updated with breakpoints details  So make sure you are debugging your application in Debug mode

User · Answer

In my case I had a string of length 70kb  Compiler did not thrown any error  But Debugger failed to hit the break point  After spending 3 hours and scratching my hair I found the cause for not hitting the break point  After removing 70kb data break point worked as normal

User · Answer

The issue was resolved by unchecking the  Properties   Build   Optimize Code  setting on the web page properties screen  under General

User · Answer

Right click on your project  then left click Properties  and select the Web tab   Verify whether the correct server is selected for your case    IIS Local IIS Express

User · Answer

It might also be  which was the case for my colleague  that you have disabled automatic loading of symbols for whichever reason  If so  reenable it by opening Tools - gt  Options - gt  Debugging - gt  Symbols and move the radiobutton to  quot Load all modules  unless excluded quot

User · Answer

Enable  Managed Compatibility Mode   Go to Tools- Options- Debugging and enable Managed Compatibility Mode

User · Answer

Right click on your project  then left click Properties  and select the Web tab  Debuggers   ASP NET

User · Answer

I struggled forever trying to fix this  Finally this is what did it for me   Select Debug- Options- Debugging- General  Tick Enable  NET Framework source stepping    This may be all you need to do but if you are like me  you also have to do the ones stated below  The below solution will also fix errors where your project is loading old assemblies  pdb files despite rebuilding and cleaning    Select  Tools -  Options -  Projects and Solutions -  Build and Run    Untick the checkbox of  Only Build startup projects and dependencies on Run     Select Always Build from the  On Run  when project are out of date  dropdown

User · Answer

I had the same issue in a Xamarin Forms project  The fix was manually converting the PCL from  NET 4 6 to  NET Standard 2 0     For Visual Studio Mac  make sure you do it for each project

[asp.net-mvc] Visual Studio breakpoints not being hit

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