VS2008 crashes when debugging

VS2008 sometimes crashes when I debug (NUnit) tests. This started happening after my recent installation of NCrunch, making NCrunch the prime suspect. The crash ("VS stopped working") happens as I trigger the debugging of the test. The debugger doesn't even get as far as the first line of the test. (There are no SetUp methods.)

Unfortunately, I haven't got a reproducible case yet. It happens about 1/3 times. I have had it crash on me from different tests.

How can I gather more information about the cause?

Thanks,
Sam

Hi Sam -

Thanks for sharing this issue. Unfortunately, because of the number of components and variables involved, this may be a tough one to isolate. I'm wondering if you might be able to help by answering the following questions:

- Does this happen only when you debug using NCrunch? Or when you debug in general?
- Does this happen for a specific solution, or for all solutions on your machine?
- Do you have any colleagues or team members with a similar environment working on your project with NCrunch? If so, do they also experience this problem?
- Can you share some more details about the setup of your system? I.e. which O/S, CPU, amount of memory?
- Do you have any other VS plugins installed?


Thanks!

Remco

Hi Remco,

I use VS2008 with ReSharper 6.1 on Windows 7 64-bit. Intel Xeon X5650, 6 GB RAM. Admittedly, I went low on memory a couple of times over the past few days (the days when I had the crash). I'll try to watch out for a correlation.

I have seen this happen when triggering the debugger from both ReSharper (Ctrl-U, D) and from NCrunch (hitting the bug button in the NCrunch Tests pane). I haven't triggered debugging using VS's F5 for a while.

I'm only working on a single solution. I am the only one using NCrunch (evaluating it) at present. If things go well, I'm hoping to widen this to other users.

My plugins:
Intel® VTune™ Amplifier XE 2013 Update 3
JetBrains ReSharper 6.1 C# Edition build 6.1.1000.82 on 2012-02-15T15:14:48
JetBrains TeamCity Addin 7.1 build 7.1.664.137 on 2013-01-27T13:08:30
NCrunch

Is there some product or system log that I could consult for more info when the crash occurs?

Thanks,
Sam

Hi Sam,

NCrunch itself doesn't tinker with the debugger outside of its own debug actions (i.e. when you instruct it to debug or break into a test), so as you've mentioned that this only started after NCrunch was installed, this leads me to suspect one of the following:

- The installation of NCrunch has triggered an unrelated configuration change or corruption issue within Visual Studio itself that causes the behaviour to appear randomly. VS plugins are usually installed with the "devenv.exe /setup" option, which causes a cascade of changes and refreshing of VS data that can sometimes surface problems if the setup operation didn't work correctly. Try executing "devenv.exe /setup", waiting for the process to complete, then restart your computer and see if this makes any difference.
- The usage of NCrunch has resulted in increased memory utilisation on your machine, thereby providing the tipping point beyond which the machine becomes unstable
- There is something else going on here with an unrelated piece of software that we haven't yet identified

I think it would be worth doing some experimentation to try and narrow down the issue. Does working without NCrunch installed make the issue go away? Or can you find a clear pattern around memory utilisation when the issue appears?


Cheers,

Remco

Thanks for the tips. I'm inclined to blame memory issues. I haven't had a crash for 2 days now. I will report back if/when I know more.

Thanks,
Sam