Visual Studio 2010 debug not starting, F5 or click on "Play" not working, not doing anything. Waiting 2-3 minutes solves the issue

Question

I have a relatively simple C# (Framework 4) console application. When I click the "Play" icon or hit F5 (i.e. start the program in debug mode), the icon becomes gray for a second, then goes back to green, but nothing happens. If I wait 2 or 3 minutes and try again, the debug session starts up normally, breakpoints are hit and everything.

Things I have tried without success:

• Cleaning the solution, then rebuilding.
• Renaming the output assembly.
• Restarting Visual Studio.

The only thing that works is just waiting. I don't see any related processes still running during these 2-3mins (svchost, conhost, *.vshost or cmd).

Answer 1

try this: open Task Manager, go to processes tab and look for process named after your app. if its there just kill the bastard and try to debug again. for me it worked like miracle

Answer 2

I've seen this problem when my network connection is flakey and I've set the debugger to automatically download symbols from Microsoft's symbol server. It tries for a long time, then times out, then life proceeds. There should be clues in the Output window (where it normally lists all the modules being loaded and whether it got symbols for them).