Fatal Error HRESULT=0x80131c08 while debugging in Visual Studio 2010

Question

I am running Visual Studio 2010 in Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit in VMware 4.1.1 running on 2 processors and roughly 2GB of ram. On debugging a simple application Visual Studio seems to hang/unresponsive. I then get a bubble message informing me that "Visual Studio is busy waiting for an internal operation to complete". After a few minutes I then receive the following prompt:

"A fatal error has occurred and debugging needs to be terminated. For more details, please see the Microsoft Help and Support web site. HRESULT=0x80131c08. ErrorCode=0x0."

Microsoft's Support website can't find a solution. I have searched my favourite resource 'Google' to no avail. As well as looking here on stack overflow. I did find a post on here similar but unrelated to VMware, post mentioned that this error was due to a memory issue, so I increased the virtual machine to 4GB and tried the whole process again. And got the same error.

Has anyone else experienced this issue, or found a solution or could point me in the direction of the right thread. As I say I did search to no avail.

Rotative

The exception code means "debugger timeout", that will come as no surprise. Never seen this, something about your setup is pretty messed up. Change the setup. – Twoseater

thanks for response...vs setup or vmware setup? – Rotative

Machine setup. So yes, probably vmware. – Twoseater

So have tried adjusting various settings in VMware, still have the same issue. I will try a different project this evening see if it still occurs if so will try setting up a new virtual machine. Forgot to mention above that I get a 'Delay Notification' while Visual Studio becomes unresponsive, will add to explanation above. – Rotative

Enough reason to dump the VM and just install VS2010 on your main OS? – Twoseater

Would if I could, but reason I am running it in VM is it's on my iMac at home. Maybe I will try bootcamp as another option. Although not ideal as I like to switch quickly between design applications and VS2010. – Rotative

I've got the same error on my computer running Windows 8 natively without any virtualisation. Computer is freshly installed, and the error occurs only sometimes and only when I exit the program. – Prewitt

I had this same thing happen to me 3 or 4 times in different spots when debugging a C# application using native code debugging, VS 2010 was installed natively on a Windows 7 machine with approximately 8 GB of RAM, ~2 GB free. I was stepping through the assembly code behind Thread.SetApartmentState() if it matters. I just started the program normally with debugging. – Yoghurt

I am having a similiar problem, again debugging C++ from C#, using VS2015 Enterprise. I suspect the C++ code has a bug or two, but finding those bugs is going to be very difficult if the debugger keeps on timing out. Again the C++ code involves much string manipulation. I suspect a buffer overflow, then I suspect when the garbage collector attempts to do its job it can not for some reason and everything freezes up for 5 minutes until one finally gets HRESULT = 0x80131c08. – Lambda

To add to above comment I am using Windows 10. – Lambda

Answer 1

This had nothing to do with my configuration, VMware / Memory. I am embarrassed to say it was completely my fault. Issue in my code with an array, although I have never been able to cause Visual Studio to crash before with my own code. Apologies for wasting your time @Hans Passant.

Rotative

What was the issue exactly? I'm running into the same problem, but I can't spot any obvious problems with my code. – Meggs

I get this error, too, sometimes when I exit my application, so I'd love to hear more Information about this - did you corrupt your heap or what was the array problem? – Prewitt

To be honest I cannot remember the exact issue with my code as I just simplified it in the end. I can however tell you that I was trying to group multiple address lines into a string array and set that in a single property as a concatenated string. Ended up separating it out into multiple address properties. – Rotative

This sounds exactly like the problem I am having. I am writing code to print the 23 attributes of a class into a CSV file. If anyone has any advice, it would be greatly appreciated. – Rebeckarebeka

Not a waste- these 8 years later and I have the exact error code newing up an array in old code I found. If not for your posting, I'd be still looking. – Civilization

Answer 2

I had this error when I automatically attach to a process in C# code using the EnvDTE namespace. The process that was attached unexpectedly ended (the process was killed somehow?) and therefore the debugger timed-out. Probably a unlucky moment, after that message with the HRESULT=0x80131c08 error I also got another message saying: could not not detach from proces X (the automatically attached process) due to a unrecoverable API failure. Hopefully this might be of some help so some one some day.

Approximation

Answer 3

I have come across this error (among others) when attaching WinDbg (non-invasive) to a process while the VisualStudio 2013 debugger is attached. If you ask why I'd even do such a thing, it's because VS 2013 no longer supports loading SOS into the VS debugger!

Tumbler

Answer 4

I had this issue and the problem was a stack overflow, I checked for possible stack overflows (in my case it was a model property calling itself) and fixed it, then the issue resolved.

Organization