Runtime exception catching different between inside and outside of MSVS

Question

I am calling the following function some where in program that will throw an exception

public static List<Templates> LoadTemplates()
{
    // ...
    // System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId == 1 // ID written to log file
    System.IO.Directory.GetFiles("does_not_exist_directory");
    // ...
}

And I try to catch the exception in the default Program.cs

try
{
    // System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId == 1
    Application.EnableVisualStyles();
    Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
    Application.Run(new Form1());
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    MessageBox.Show("ERROR CAUGHT");
}
finally { // do clean up }

When run in MSVS, the exception get caught as expected. But when run by double-clicking the .exe in the output directory the exception display in a message dialog stating

EDIT:

To catch the error when running the .exe from output directory, the code must be compiled with handling the Application.ThreadException event

Application.ThreadException += new System.Threading.ThreadExceptionEventHandler(Application_ThreadException);
Application.Run(new Form());

But then MSVS will behave undesirably by showing the MSVS native "Troubleshooting Tips" borderless message dialog "Unhandled Exception".

How can I ensure that it behaves the same in and out of MSVS?

Answer 1

The code you have shown will only catch exceptions in the same thread. It's really hard to tell without seeing the offending code and it's context.

You can subscribe to a couple of events to catch all of those:

• AppDomain.UnhandledException
• Application.ThreadException

please read/note the docs (the first one should do) - there are some caveats.