[visual-studio] How to stop console from closing on exit?

I'm using Visual Studio 2010 and Windows 7 x64

The command prompt closes after exit, even though I used "Start without debug". Is there a setting somewhere that I can use?

What about Console.Readline();?

You could open a command prompt, CD to the Debug or Release folder, and type the name of your exe. When I suggest this to people they think it is a lot of work, but here are the bare minimum clicks and keystrokes for this:

• in Visual Studio, right click your project in Solution Explorer or the tab with the file name if you have a file in the solution open, and choose Open Containing Folder or Open in Windows Explorer
• in the resulting Windows Explorer window, double-click your way to the folder with the exe
• Shift-right-click in the background of the explorer window and choose Open Commmand Window here
• type the first letter of your executable and press tab until the full name appears
• press enter

I think that's 14 keystrokes and clicks (counting shift-right-click as two for example) which really isn't much. Once you have the command prompt, of course, running it again is just up-arrow, enter.

Yes, in VS2010 they changed this behavior somewhy.
Open your project and navigate to the following menu: Project -> YourProjectName Properties -> Configuration Properties -> Linker -> System. There in the field SubSystem use the drop-down to select Console (/SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE) and apply the change.
"Start without debugging" should do the right thing now.

Or, if you write in C++ or in C, put

system("pause");

at the end of your program, then you'll get "Press any key to continue..." even when running in debug mode.

Add a Console.ReadKey call to your program to force it to wait for you to press a key before exiting.