Attaching Visual Studio debugger to Windows service -- "attach" greyed out

Question

I am trying to attach to a windows service using Visual Studio 2010 → Debug → Attach to process command. When I scroll through the list of processes my Windows service is greyed out and the attach button is also greyed out.

I have tried changing the service account to local service, my account, etc., but it remains greyed out. Is there a way to troubleshoot this?

Answer 1

I usually have the same issue and I take care of it by adding a boolean to my configuration that triggers a debug launch. You can launch a Visual Studio debugger instance that attaches to your Windows service process by calling this:

System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch(); 

What's nice is that you can call it wherever you wish in your code.

Answer 2

In Visual Studio 2010, on the 'Attach to Process' dialog, check the two check boxes at the bottom that say 'Show processes from all users' and 'Show processes in all sessions'.

On doing that I found that I had my process show up twice, one running as System and one running under my local Windows login. I am not sure why (any input on this would be great!), but I was able to attach to the not-grayed-out one that showed up and was also able to step through my code this way.

The second one was the servicename.vshost.exe process as Ozz pointed out in the comments.

If you still do not see it, make sure your service is still running. Sometimes you might have a failing service that started and automatically stopped and therefore doesn't show up in the attach to options.