MonicaBoris's WebLog

Can't start debugging in VS 2003 after installing SP1

TechNet Archive — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 21:48:00 GMT

Some customers are reporting problems with start debugging an application after VS2003 SP1 has been installed. Here is the scenario:

You have a managed project open (like, for example, a C# class library) and in the Project Properties, under Configuration Properties | Debugging you have Debug Mode = "Program" and Start Application = <some application that will load either this dll or other managed code you wrote> and when you F5 you are getting the an error messge saying that your .exe was not found.

If you are running into this issue please check to see if the .NET Framework 2.0 is installed on your machine (i.e. you have the following directory on your machine: <system drive>:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727). If you have this installed, here is a workaround you could try:

Create a file called <your exe's name>.exe.config with the following contents and place it next to your exe on your machine:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

</startup>

</configuration>

This will force your exe to load the 1.1 version of the runtime instead of the 2.0 one which otherwise would be loaded by default since it's the latest version available. The VS2003 debugger does not support debugging against the 2.0 version of the .NET Framework hence the problem.

Hope this helps!

Debugging server-side script loaded in an ASP page using Visual Studio 2005

TechNet Archive — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 23:08:00 GMT

If you are using Visual Studio 2005 and you are an ASP developer, you will notice that the debugging experience is different from the previous VS versions. Basically VS 2005 doesn't offer the same level of support for legacy ASP debugging as the previous versions and this is because it is mostly targeted towards the ASP.NET developers. However, the ASP developers were not totally forgotten, there is away to do this in VS2005, only it requires some manual setup. Here are the steps you need to do to be able to debug server side script in an ASP page that is part of an IIS Web application:

1. Create ASP.NET web app. Add the ASP page to it, set it as startup page.

2. In IIS manager, open the property page of the virtual directory of the application. On the Directory tab, click the Configuration button.

3. On the Debugging tab, enable both checkboxes in the "Debugging Flags" group.

4. Reset IIS (run iisreset from a command prompt)

5. Ctrl+F5 in VS to launch the ASP page in Internet Explorer.

6. Open the Debug | Attach to Process dialog. If you are using IIS6 (Win 2003), look for a process named w3wp.exe, otherwise, look for aspnet_wp.exe that has Script available in the Type column. Attach to this process using Script code type.

7. Open the Debug | Windows | Script Explorer window. Your .ASP page should show up in there.

8. Open your .ASP page from the Script Explorer window by double-clicking on it.

9. Set your BP in the ASP page opened this way. The BP should be hit when you refresh the ASP page in IE.

Note that only steps 5-9 need to be performed every time you want to debug, the rest of them you only need to do once for every web app you want to configure.

Hope this helps!

AppWeek in the Visual C# QA team

TechNet Archive — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 01:31:00 GMT

I mentioned in one of my posts that we had an AppWeek going on in our team recently. What is an AppWeek for a QA team at Microsoft? It is the “Application Week” when all the QA people in a team get to play “Dev”, pretend they are the developer customer and have fun developing real-life applications. Since I started at MS almost 4 years ago I've participated in 3 AppWeeks and they have all been very fun and useful experiences. This is how it works: we split in teams of 4-5 people each having its own lead and develop a mini-project that we demo at the end of the appweek. This way we get to work with areas of the VS.NET product that we don't test on a day-to-day basis, learn about new technologies and use them in a way so they interract with each other just like in a small real life app development scenario. This time around I got to be an AppWeek team captain and my team decided to create a fun interactive web site that would display all the events going on in Seattle right now, based on the logged-in user's preferences, send notifications about these events, let the user create his/her own events and invite other people to attend, create personal appointments etc. We called it GetALife :) We used a lot of the ASP.NET features and although I can't talk about un-released features all I can say is that I am really impressed with how easy it is to create a cool complete web site using the future version of ASP.NET!!!

Other teams developed other cool application from games using DirectX 3D to monitoring tools for managed applications or IM-like messaging applications. I was verry impressed with all the apps and with how much all the teams have accomplished only in one week using Visual Studio .NET, C# and the .NET Frameworks! This Friday we'll also find out which team won the prize for best app (I hope it's gonna be my team but even if it's not, AppWeeks are fun!).

Loading debug symbols when remote debugging: native vs managed

TechNet Archive — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 06:03:00 GMT

I have noticed that a lot of people are confused when it comes to symbol loading while debugging an application on a remote machine. Basically there are three cases:

1. Debugging native code

Let's say you are attaching to a native app running on Machine A from a VS.NET debugger running on Machine B. In this case, if you want to automatically load symbols for this application (or for a dll loaded by it) the symbols (i.e. the corresponding .pdb file) needs to exist on the debugger machine (i.e. Machine B).

A common scenario here is when you have a symbol cache specified. This needs to be on the debugger machine.

2. Debugging managed code

Now let's say you are attaching to a managed app running on Machine A from a VS.NET debugger running on Machine B. In this case, if you want to automatically load symbols for this application (or for a dll loaded by it) the symbols (i.e. the corresponding .pdb file) needs to exist on the machine where the app is running (i.e. Machine A). In otheer words, if you want to automatically load symbols from a symbol server, the sym server neds to be set up on Machine A and the cache directory needs to be on Machine A.

3. Debugging mixed mode (interop)

If you want to debug an app running on Machine A in mixed mode (native + managed) then, the symbol files for the native modules need to be on the debugger machine (Machine B) and the symbols for the managed modules need to be on Machine A.

Customizing the Calendar control in ASP.NET

TechNet Archive — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 04:22:00 GMT

Recently I had to work on customizing an ASP.NET Calendar control by adding text to the day cells for my team's AppWeek project. This proved to be not as straight-forward as I thought so here is what I did in case someone else might want to do the same.

The best place to modify the text in a cell seems to be the DayRender event handler. So the first thing I tried was to just modify the e.Cell.Text property like this:

void Calendar1_DayRender(object sender, DayRenderEventArgs e)
    {

                    e.Cell.Text += “My text”;

}

The main problem was that after adding text to a day cell in the control I wasn't able to select that day by clicking on the day number. Here is what you can do if you still want the select day functionality:

void Calendar1_DayRender(object sender, DayRenderEventArgs e)
{
AddTextToDayCell(e, Datetime.Today, “MyText“);

}

void AddTextToDayCell(DayRenderEventArgs e, Datetime d, string text)

{

if(e.Day.Date == d.Date)

{

string ID = ((System.TimeSpan)(e.Day.Date - new DateTime(2000, 1, 1))).Days.ToString();

e.Cell.Text = "<a href=\"javascript:__doPostBack('Calendar1','" + ID + "')\" style=\"color:#663399\">" + e.Day.DayNumberText; //assuming the name of the calendar control is Calendar1.

e.Cell.Text +=text;

}

If you want your new text to act as a link to some other URL, you could modify the AddTextToCell function as follows:

  private void Calendar1_DayRender(object sender, System.Web.UI.WebControls.DayRenderEventArgs e)
  {
   AddTextToDayCell(e, DateTime.Today, "MyText", "http://www.msn.com"); //this will add the MyText link to http://www.msn.com to the current day's cell
  }

  void AddTextToDayCell(DayRenderEventArgs e, DateTime d, string text, string URL)

{

if(e.Day.Date == d.Date)

{

string ID = ((System.TimeSpan)(e.Day.Date - new DateTime(2000, 1, 1))).Days.ToString();

e.Cell.Text = "<a href=\"javascript:__doPostBack('Calendar1','" + ID + "')\" style=\"color:#663399\">" + e.Day.DayNumberText;

e.Cell.Text += "<br> <a href=\""+ URL + "\">" + text;

}

Hope you'll find this helpful. Btw, Microsoft is not liable in any way in case you have any trouble after using this code :)

Having trouble debugging script in VS.NET?

TechNet Archive — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 03:31:00 GMT

Here is a whitepaper that could help you out:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/csharp/learn/whitepapers/How%20to%20debug%20script%20in%20Visual%20Studio%20.Net.doc

Introduction

TechNet Archive — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 03:26:00 GMT

Hello and welcome to my weblog!

My name is Monica Boris (Rosculet) and I work on the Visual Studio .NET Debugger QA team. My main areas of expertise are (but not limited to) ASP.NET debugging, Script Debugging, SideBySide, Compatibility and Symbols. I am also an ASP.NET fan in general, not only from the debugger perspective. General C# programming and the compact frameworks for devices are other areas of interest for me.

I'm originally from Bucharest Romania where I graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Bucharest. I have a Bsc and a Msc in Statistics and Applied Mathematics from there.