Visual Studio 2008 Remote Debugger - Not Reaching Breakpoints

Question

I have installed the VS 2008 SP1 Remote debugger on the machine running the program I want to debug. I am running the Remote Debugger with no auth / allow anyone to connect on said machine. I am running VS 2008 on my development machine with the project for that application open. I have copied a .dll that i have made changed to the source and rebuilt, locally, to the executing directory of the target program, remotely, including it's .pdb file. I have attached to the process of the remote application though VS and the Remote Debugger.

The break point I put in my project says that it will never be reached because the module is not loaded.

An exception on the remote machine, even when i select retry, dose not cause any effect on my local VS instance.

I want to hit a break point i place locally when the remote application reaches it. How do I do this?

Am i miss understanding how Visual Studio Remote Debugging works?

Answer 1

Is the breakpoint the normal red circle or does it have a caution side in it?

If it's a red circle then the likely problem is "Just my Code" is enabled and VS thinks it's not your code. Go to debugger -> Tools -> Options and disable "Just My code". That should clear up the issue.

If it has the caution sign then hover over the break point and see what the error message says and please post it back as a comment / edit to your answer.

EDIT OP said hollow circle with the "No symbols" tooltip

Open up the modules window (debugger -> windows -> Modules). Then scroll down to the DLL that contains your code. Right click on the window and select Load Symbols. This will likely open the open file dialog. Navigate to your symbols and hit OK.