Can't start debugger in VS2012 RC

Question

Configuration:

• Windows 7, 64 bit
• Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2012 RC Version 11.0.50522.1 RCREL
• Running VS in administrator mode

Answer 1

On another computer, with the RTM of Visual Studio 2012, I opened an older project and found that I could not press F5 to start the application. All that seemed to happen was a message in the status bar on the bottom edge of the window: "This item does not support previewing".

This solution had two projects, and the correct one was bold in the Solution Explorer, presumably indicating that it was the startup project.

However, after selecting the project and choosing "Set as Startup Project" in the context menu, I was then able to use F5 to run and debug it.

It turns out that the "This item does not support previewing" was nothing to do with the problem, but is a message that shows on the status bar whenever the item just selected in the Solution Explorer does does not support previewing.

Answer 2

All you have to do to fix this is go "Project > Set as StartUp Project" then hit F5 or the debug button and it will work!!!

Answer 3

Just my two cents,

I have experienced this issue twice now and it turns out after all of the suggestions I tried, it was BitDefender on my local machine that was doing this. So my fix for this problem is to try adding in exceptions to the local security software into the firewall and AV parts of it. Tell it to ignore the msvsmon.exe and devenv.exe altogether and see what difference that makes.

Otherwise try ripping it off altogether and see if the it lets you debug your solution.

You can see here for more info: http://forum.bitdefender.com/index.php?showtopic=37028

I installed the latest BitDefender version and all was fine for me.

Answer 4

I had the same issue - starting debugger just told me what a good job it had made of the build and the decided that that was enough.

I feared the worst, but luckily for me a reboot fixed the problem.

I know that this is therefore a pretty useless post in as far as offering help to anyone suffering with this issue, but I thought it was worth noting the point as it shows a) another person with the same problem so please fix it MS, and b) that sometimes a reboot fixes it so maybe that tells the maintainers something.

Answer 5

I have fixed the same issue by checking off the "Enable the Visual Studio hosting process" option from the start-up project Properties->Debug - Enable Debuggers options

Answer 6

For what it's worth, I found that I received this error message when I had an entry missing in my hosts file. I am using local domain aliases and the one I was trying to debug with wasn't in hosts. Adding the missing entry solved the problem for me.