Continuing in the Visual Studio debugger after an exception occurs

Question

When I debug a C# program and I get an exception throwed (either thrown by code OR thrown by the framework), the IDE stops and get me to the corresponding line in my code.

Everything is fine for now.

I then press "F5" to continue. From this moment, it seams like I'm in an infinite loop. The IDE always get me back to the exception line. I have to Shift + F5 (stop debugging/terminate the program) to get out of his.

I talked with some co-workers here and they told me that this happens sometime to them too.

What's happening?

Answer 1

You probably have the option "Unwind the callstack on unhandled exceptions" checked in Visual Studio. When this option is on Visual Studio will unwind to right before the exception, so hitting F5 will keep ramming into the same exception.

If you uncheck the option Visual Studio will break at the exception, but hitting F5 will proceed past that line.

This option is under menu Tools → Options → Debugging → General.

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Update: According to Microsoft, this option was removed from Visual Studio in VS2017, and maybe earlier.

Answer 2

This is because the exception is un-handled and Visual Studio can not move past that line without it being handled in some manner. Simply put, it is by design.

One thing that you can do is drag and drop the execution point (yellow line/arrow) to a previous point in your code and modify the in memory values (using the Visual Studio watch windows) so that they do not cause an exception. Then start stepping through the code again¹.

It is a better idea though to stop execution and fix the problem that is causing the exception, or properly handle the exception if the throw is not desired.

_{¹ This can have unintended consequences since you are essentially re-executing some code (not rewinding the execution).}