x86 Remote Debugger Service on x64

Question

Is it possible to install the x86 Remote Debugger as a Service on a 64bit machine? I need to attach a debugger to managed code in a Session 0 process. The process runs 32b

Answer 1

I haven't tried this, but here's a suggestion anyway:

Try installing the x86 remote debugger service manually.

sc create "Remote Debugger" binpath= "C:\use\short\filename\in\the\path\x86\msvsmon.exe /service msvsmon90"

Two notes:

• You'll need to use short filenames in the path to msvsmon.exe to prevent having to quote the path (since the whole command needs to be quoted)
• there must be a space after the "binpath=" (and no space before the '=' character). Whoever wrote the command line parser for the sc command should be cursed.

Then you can use the services.msc control panel applet to get it running with the right credentials.

You'll probably have to stop or maybe even delete the existing x64 remote debugger service.

Answer 2

I ran into this issue today (64 bit OS and VS 2019). I changed Configuration to use x64 for the project, IISExpress to use 64 bit and Platform target to be x64. It still used the 32 bit debugger and complained. Finally, when I enabled Script Debugging it started using the 64 bit debugger. So I would say the combination of all did the trick.