Remote Debugging not working. "Unable to attach to process. The RPC server is not available."

Question

My development workstation is running VS2012 Update 1. The OS is Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1 x64. I have a laptop running Windows 8 onto which I've installed the VS2012 Remote Debugger. I've started msvsmon and it's quietly sitting in the system tray or what passes for it on Windows 8.

I have set up a breakpoint in VS2012 at a location where I need to do some debugging. In VS2012, I click on Debug | Attach to Process... I get the dialog showing the list of processes running on my machine. I change the machine name to the name of the Laptop.

I am having two different problems:

Problem 1:

With Windows Firewall running, VS2012 connects to the remote debugger server. I see the list of the processes running on the Laptop. I choose the one I want to debug and click Attach. I get "Unable to attach to process. The RPC server is not available."

What's going on here?

Problem 2:

I turn off Windows Firewall on my desktop. When I try to connect to the process running on the laptop, it connects and loads all of the symbols. So far so good. Once all of that is finished, I perform the action that would cause my breakpoint to be hit. The process on the remote machine freezes, but so does VS2012. I've sat here as long as 10 minutes waiting with no change. At that point, I kill msvsmon on the remote machine and my program goes away with it, but VS is still locked up.

Any ideas??

Answer 1

I have faced a similar issue in VS 2013 showing the message "Unable to attach to process. The RPC server is not available".

I have resolved this by un-checking the "Use Managed Compatibility Mode" option from Debug > Options and Settings > General Tab.