Visual Studio 2008 - The breakpoint cannot be hit

Question

I know that many people have had this problem... but I am now having it and cannot solve the issue. VS 2008 is randomly giving me an error after working on a project for weeks. When I set a debug point, I get a warning: The breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document.

I have re-built the solution with no debug points and re-tried. I have also tried to Load Symbols from path and that has not worked either... Can someone please help walk me through the necessary steps to getting my debug function working again.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Delete the solutions suo file. This has fixed weird debugging problems with breakpoints every time for me. Note, you will lose your solution settings, such as bookmarks, breakpoints, and such.

Answer 2

1) Does creating a new project work? If so, you have a corrupted settings somewhere. Moving your files over to your new project would be the easiest procedure to resolve your issue.

2) Does taking your solution to another PC work? If so, then you have an issue with your environment.

Try these checks in order: 1) Select your Configuration Manager, check if your CPU is "Any" or your "x86" or "x64" depending on your hardware.

2) Try remove all the other configuration other than Debug. Add a new Configuration based on your Debug and the CPU as Any

3) Drastic move.. close your visual studio and run the following

devenv /ResetSettings 

4) Even more drastic move...

devenv /Setup

Good luck

Answer 3

There is a hotfix for Visual Studio SP1 regarding debugging issues here. It did fix issues I had with catching breakpoints in multithreaded source code. It also fixes other potential causes for breakpoints to be missed, so it is definitely worth a try.

Also, have a look at this SO question.

Regards.

Answer 4

I run into this occasionally and each time the solution is a bit different. This time I was using a different user profile to develop than I normally do in Visual Studio 2008 and found that I couldn't debug (breakpoints cannot be hit) shortly thereafter - on a solution with 2 vb.net projects. I ended up doing 2 things but I think the latter did the trick for me.

1. In the main projects properties, go to the Advanced Compile Options button on the Compile tab and ensure the "Generate debug info:" is set to Full.
2. Right-click on the main project and select "Set as a startup project"