Visual Studio Remote Debugger Failed to Start

Question

I recently installed Visual Studio 2017 on my laptop (running Windows 10). I have a C++ project using the OpenCV and Eigen libraries, and it seems to compile correctly, but when I try to run the Local Windows Debugger, I get an error message that says:

Visual Studio Remote Debugger (MSVSMON.EXE) failed to start. If this problem persists, please repair your Visual Studio installation via 'Add or Remove Programs' in Control Panel

I ran the Repair tool it suggested, with no luck. I also checked for a solution online, and came across a support page (Link). I tried turning off my anti-virus and firewall as per the suggestions on the support page, but that didn't get rid of the error message. My laptop is brand new, and I just installed Visual Studio and the Remote Debugger, so I don't think it would be the case that the version of the Remote Debugger doesn't match with that of Visual Studio. All of the other suggestions are for people doing remote debugging, but I'm doing a local debug.

Any help/suggestions on resolving this issue would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Find what's preventing msvsmon.exe from running.

I encountered this error in Visual Studio 2019 while trying to start debugging a .net 5 console application. I tried to run C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x64\msvsmon.exe and found that User Access Control dialog opens and is asking to run it as an administrator. So two solutions were possible for me, either run VS2019 as Administrator or remove the Run this program as an administrator setting for msvsmon.exe.

Answer 2

Firstly close the Visual Studio. Goto AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio and select version (Ex: VS 2015 has 14.0 folder). Then delete ComponentModelCache folder. Start the Visual Studio.