Visual studio 2012 - locals have disappeared

Question

While debugging VS2012 I have found that I can no longer access variable values:

• The Locals window does not show anything (pictured below).
• The Watch

Answer 1

Please check the answer here.

In a nutshell, you need to open: Tools > Options > Debugger > General, and enable the flag [Use Managed Compatibility Mode] at the end of the list.

Answer 2

That happens sometime when your Optimize Code box is ticked in project properties under Build section.

Answer 3

I've eventually managed to sort this out by myself - so I'll give my solution here in case anyone else has the same problem:

I found that in Tools->Options->Debugging->Symbols was pointing to an old NuGet symbol server. Somehow a wrong symbol server looked like it was taking down the entire Locals and Immediate Window systems.

Updating the symbol server fixed my problems.

Answer 4

I had the same problem with Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 on Windows 10 while using remote debugging.

According to another SO question the locals/variables are broken in the remote debugging tools.

I haven't found a solution yet, but I'm going to switch to Visual Studio 2015 so I haven't really been looking for it either...

Answer 5

I will add this answer as I had the same problem with a different resolution.

I had mistakenly closed the locals window and could not find it as it was not with other windows under the VIEW menu. I found it under the DEBUG menu Windows option.

or Optionally:

Ctrl+Alt+V, L

Answer 6

I will add this answer as I had the same problem with a different resolution.

I got this too in a Web project. Neither restarting Visual Studio or any other solution in this thread sovled it.

My solution was to restart IIS. After that I rebuilt the project and started it and got locals to work again.