Configure Visual Studio 2010 Remote Debugger

Question

I have installed the Visual Studio 2010 Remote Debugger on a Windows Server 2003 (x86) server, and am attempting to connect to it results in the following error:

Unable to connect to the Microsoft Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor named 'ServerName'. The Visual Studio Remote Debugger on the target computer cannot connect back to this computer. A firewall may be preventing communication via DCOM to the local computer. Please see Help for assistance.

I have checked my Windows firewall setting, and ensured file sharing is enabled on my local machine. I have ensured that DCOM is running on the server, as well as the debugging service. There are no actual firewalls involved that I know of.

What else do I need to change to get this to work?

Answer 1

I just ran into connectivity issue. The problem was the Client PC (my desktop) could connect to Remote Host running debug monitor, but the Remote Host could not send data back to my desktop.

Turns out that it was caused by the 'Profile' setup in Windows Firewall. The Firewall rule was being limited to 'Public' profile - but my desktop was connected to the local domain. Changing the setting to 'Domain' ensured the Remote Host could communicate debugging data back to Client desktop.

Check under Windows Firewall -> Inbound Rules -> Microsoft Visual Studio -> Advanced Tab.

Cheers, J

Answer 2

Here are the steps I took to get remote debugging to work against an ASP.NET app. Not sure if you've done this already, hopefully something might help.

• On my machine (call it DEVMACHINE from now on) I shared out the folder that contained the remote debugger (msvsmon.exe). On my machine, it was located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x86. I called the share msvsmon

• On the server, I opened Windows explorer and navigated to \\DEVMACHINE\msvsmon, and ran msvsmon.exe (This opened the Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor)

• On DEVMACHINE, I started Visual Studio 2010 and opened the solution that represents the application I'm attempting to debug.

• In Visual Studio, clicked Tools > Attach To Process...

• Entered the server name in the Qualifier field, then double clicked on the w3p.exe process that was in the list.

• I then placed a break point in the location I wanted to start debugging

Couple things to note: The code deployed to the server was a Debug Build, the pdb files were there, along with the binaries. I had full admin rights on the server. No tools were installed on the server, I simply ran the exe that was located on DEVMACHINE. I did not have any firewalls between the DEVMACHINE and the server. And, both DEVMACHINE and the server are on the same domain.

Hope that helps.