AppFabric DataCacheFactory() initialization hangs in VS2013, works fine in VS2010 and VS2012

Question

I have an application that has been working for a while. I tried running it with VS2013 and it hangs on a line where it tries to initialize a DataCacheFactory object. The same code works fine with VS2010 and VS2012.

    private static DataCacheFactory GetDataCacheFactory()
    {
        if (factory == null)
        {
            lock (lockObject)
            {
                if (factory == null)
                {
                    factory = new DataCacheFactory();  //VS2013 hangs on this line
                }
            }
        }
        return factory;
    }

No errors are generated. The code just hangs on the line factory = new DataCacheFactory().

The AppFabric DLLs are current versions.

I welcome any suggestions for identifying why the code hangs on this line.

Caning

could you please describe your environment. Is it a remote cluster or a single host running on your machine ? – Neurasthenia

Could you attach windbg to your vshost & devenv processes, and print what ~*e!clrstack command yields (using sosex) ? – Tammitammie

Or just attach another devenv to your running process, and see what threads are alive, and what they are doing/hanging on... – Tammitammie

I am running the app in debug mode on my local box – Caning

I had a similar issue and resolved it: [#20968424 [1]: #20968424 – Obscure

I checked the port. I also tried changing it, but no luck. Still hanging on that line. – Caning

Answer 1

I have resolved this issue, but I don't know what was causing it. I tried using DebugDiag to take a dump and analyze it. The analysis indicated that the process was waiting for something to complete in a Compatibility module in some Microsoft code.

I noticed that there were two Compatibility Databases installed with IIS 8. I uninstalled both items and tried running my app again. This time the app successfully executed the line that was hanging.

While this resolved the issue on this machine, I still don't know what is causing the problem. I have a colleague with a similar configuration and he has no problem with the app hanging on the line above, even with the Compatibility databases installed.

Caning

Answer 2

As you are developing your app on VS, this might be a .net application. please check the targeted .net framework version from project properties when running on VS13.

Counterproof

The targeted .net framework is 4.0. It is the same code that runs in VS 2010 and 2012, but hangs in 2013. – Caning

perform that operation on a try block and catch any exception. try { factory = new DataCacheFactory(); } catch(//relevant exception ) – Counterproof

I have tried the same code in a try/catch block, but that didn't yield anything as there was no exception. The code is just hanging on this line. – Caning