Unable to start UE4Editor.exe

Question

Trying to launch the editor from Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate I get the following error in the title. VS says it's because it can't reach MSVSMON.EXE on a "remote computer", the weird thing is that I'm not trying to debug on a remote computer, but rather, on my own. My firewall is ZoneAlarm if that makes any difference.

Any help?

Edit: I've set all in and outbound communication to and from both unreal and visual studio in my firewall to "allowed", yet for some reason it still won't let me debug...

Edit 2: Disabling the firewall entirely does nothing at all.. The error persists

Edit 3: Uninstalling ZA altogether seems to fix the issue

Answer 1

Just a note, so far you've been chasing the wrong problem and have not yet gathered enough relevant facts. The dialog is very unhelpful, this does not have anything to do with a "remote computer".

Msvsmon.exe is used in this scenario because UE4Editor.exe is a 64-bit process. Visual Studio cannot use its built-in debugger, it is a 32-bit process. Debugging a 64-bit process with a 32-bit debugger is not possible. So it has a workaround, it uses the 64-bit remote debugger, C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x64\msvsmon.exe. Basically works the same has remote debugging on another machine, except it doesn't use the network to connect to the debugger.

So your firewall settings and the considerable amount of trouble-shooting info about remote debugging you can find on the web or MSDN just does not apply in your case at all. You've been chasing the wrong problem.

Having an issue with msvsmon.exe when debugging 64-bit code is quite unusual, never heard of anybody having trouble with it before. You want to do a basic smoke test to check if it is really a problem with msvsmon.exe or it is actually UE4Editor.exe that puts up a fight.

Create a little do-nothing C# console mode app, just Console.ReadLine() in the Main() method. Project + Properties, Build tab, untick the "Prefer 32-bit" option. This ensures it runs as a 64-bit process. Press F5. If all is well then it starts running and you'll see msvsmon.exe in the Task Manager, Processes tab.

If that does not work either then something is interfering with the process interop between Visual Studio and msvsmon.exe. Usually anti-malware related, disable that first. Next thing to try is to start killing processes one-by-one with Task Manager to find the evil-doer. If debugging the C# app works okay then you have a good reason to visit the UE4 forum to find help.

Update your question with what you've learned.

Answer 2

Uninstall Zone Alarm and everything will be OK.