Nik Reiman
Nik Reiman

Reputation: 40420

How to set Visual Studio as the default post-mortem debugger?

Not too long ago, I had a problem which required me to set WinDbg.exe as the default post-mortem debugger. Now that I've fixed that and am back doing normal work, it would be really nice if I could set VS to be my default post-mortem debugger. How does one go about doing this?

Also, how do I make VS attach to an already existing session? That is, I've got my VS project open in one window, and a command line open where I'm launching my program from. If the program crashes, how do I get VS to figure out to attach the debugger to the active line in the project that's already open?

Upvotes: 16

Views: 13989

Answers (2)

MvdD
MvdD

Reputation: 23496

from the Microsoft support page:

  1. Start Registry Editor and locate the following Registry subkey in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subtree: \SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS NT\CURRENTVERSION\AEDEBUG

  2. Select the Debugger value.

  3. On the Edit menu, click String.

  • To use the Windows debugger, type windbg -p %ld -e %ld.
  • To use Visual C++ 4.2 or earlier, type msvc -p %ld -e %ld. *To use Visual C++ 5.0 or later, type msdev.exe -p %ld -e %ld.
  • To use Dr. Watson, type drwtsn32.exe -p %ld -e %ld. You can also make Dr. Watson the default debugger by running this command:drwtsn32.exe -i.
  1. Choose OK and exit Registry Editor.

Upvotes: 9

Josh Sklare
Josh Sklare

Reputation: 4174

You can re-enable Visual Studio for Just-In-Time debugging from within Visual Studio:

Go to the Tools | Options | Debugging | Just-In-Time dialog. Then make sure all Native and Managed (if you're debugging a .NET application) are checked. Next time you get a crash, the Visual Studio Just-In-Time debugger will come up.

The Visual Studio Just-In-Time debugger let's you choose whether you want to open a new instance of Visual Studio or start debugging with a currently open solution.

Upvotes: 27

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