VS2008: Unable to start debugging, Remote Debugging Monitor has been closed

Question

I am getting a mysterious error from time to time that I just don't get. I can "fix" it by restarting Visual Studio 2008, but that isn't exactly a solution...

It states the following:

Error while trying to run project: Unable to start debugging.

The Microsoft Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor has been closed on the remote machine.

I am not doing anything remote, as far as I know... Just running regular debug, F5 style. What does it mean? How can I fix it?

Dialyze

A machine reboot made it go away for me.. Pretty annoying. – Interrupter

Answer 1

If you are on a 64bit OS then you are 'silently' remote debugging. Devenv runs in WoW64 (meaning it's a 32bit process) ... when you hit F5 is launchs msvsmon.exe as a 64 bit process and sets up a communication channel between devenv and msvsmon "silent remote debugging" to allow debugging your 64 bit process.

Check task manager when you are successfully debugging and you should see msvsmon.exe running.

If the above assumption (64bit OS) is correct, the error you are seeing is based on Visual studio getting into a bad state. If it gives this error while an msvsmon.exe instance is running ... kill that instance. If there is no msvsmon.exe running, then restarting devenv is probably your only option.

Another possible workaround is to set your project to 'platform x86' so that you are directly debugging. The x86 compiled managed assemblies or native binaries will run in Wow64, and prevent any need for the silent remote debugging. (Obviously this doesn't help if it is a 64-bit only problem ... but in practice that is rare.)

I hope this helped or can assist you in searching out a better answer.

Celenacelene

Awesome. I had no idea. Will look for that the next time it happens. Thanks! – Dialyze

I always wondered by the remote debugger was running locally. Thanks! – Salacious

Ran into this exact same error this morning in VS2010. Would be nice if MS would stop buggering around and make VS a true 64-bit app instead of a thin wrapper around 32-bit. – Filicide

This problem is still around even after VS2010 SP1. Changing platform helps, but there can be slight compilation issues with .resx files in your solution. – Bernicebernie

and when restarting VS doesn't fix it? even ensuring devenv.exe, msbuild is all killed and IIS restarted . I HATE HATE HATE REBOOTING for stuff like this – Saddlecloth

Worked like a charm. Just had to restart visual studio. – Nomenclator

Neither restarting the program, nor rebooting my machine fixed this for me. :'( – Bastardy

Answer 2

I had same issue with asp.net development on VS2010. It was an issue on my IIS. I had not go to command prompt had to iisreset. Otherwise just simply reset iis on iis management window. It fixed the issue for me.

Sassy