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 gra

Answer 1

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).