CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netvisual-studiodebuggingwindows-xp
Moayad Hani Abu Rmilah
Moayad Hani Abu Rmilah

Reputation: 830

Why does pausing my project during debugging stop other programs?

I am working on a .Net project and it just works fine, however I noticed that when I pause the program while debugging, some other files that are completely not related to the project cannot open. Examples of these files are the ones that open in MS Access, MS Internet Explorer...

Once I click on the run button, the files open immediately.

Is there any suggestion on why this file freezing occurs?

The following image illustrates this issue (The files in the red square do not open while pausing the debugger, they open once the program is run).

enter image description here

Upvotes: 0

Views: 37

Answers (1)

Damien_The_Unbeliever
Damien_The_Unbeliever

Reputation: 239654

The culprit here is almost certainly that something in the process of opening the files is using DDE. The problem with DDE is that it works by using broadcast messages. These messages have to be processed by every top-level window on the desktop. And if one of those top-level window's message loop isn't currently processing messages, but is instead paused in the debugger, then DDE kindof breaks down.

DDE was fine for its day - before pre-emptive multi-tasking was added to windows. Which was a long time ago, but unfortunately some programs do still use it.

Upvotes: 2

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