Debugging without Visual Studio, but source and pdb files available

Question

The situation is as follows:

I have a Windows 10 Machine with Visual Studio 2019, and created a c# .NET project in debug mode there and it Works.

The program happens to throw an unhandled exception with a meaningless/ambiguous message on a different Windows 7 machine. On that machine, Visual Studio 2008 happens to be installed. I get asked whether to use it for debugging, and I'd love to do so, to get the code which caused the exception. After copying over all the source files onto the Windows 7 machine I find that I cannot load the project using Visual Studio 2008, since VS 2008 refuses to load project files created with newer versions of Visual Studio.

I do, however, get an offer to use the Visual Studio 2008 debugger upon the crash, but if I use it, all I get is rather useless assembler code and a meaningless crash location address, since the debugger is not connected to the source code, and Visual Studio is not, AFAIK, capable to link that address to the source code. So the situation is, that I have all the source and symbol files available on the target machine, but the debugger does not load them, I don't know whether I can somehow show them to the debugger outside Visual Studio, and starting the project from Visual Studio 2008 is not possible because it won't load the project source files.

Is there any way I get a meaningful debugging, I mean with all the files in place it should be possible to debug with source display, even if the Visual Studio versions don't match.

Framework version is 4.x (most recent, think is 4.7). The message says that a service hasn't been started or is missing on the W7 machine, unfortunately no hint which of the 1000 possible services is meant. If I load the VS 2008 debugger, I get the fairly useless hint that the crash happened at address $..... (very, very long hex address). If I knew which part of the program caused the exception I could find out with ease. The question isn't targetet to to resolve the exception, but solely how to use the debugger to find out where the exception comes from, under the described circumstances.

Remote debugging

Pavel Anikhouski
– Pavel Anikhouski

2020-07-14 10:59:55 +00:00
Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 10:59 — Pavel Anikhouski
– Pavel Anikhouski, Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 10:59

Sergey Vlasov · Accepted Answer · 2020-07-15 04:10:28Z

2

You can use tools like dnSpy and my Runtime Flow for light weight debugging to find which part of the program caused the exception.

answered Jul 15, 2020 at 4:10

Sergey Vlasov

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Mr Qian · Accepted Answer · 2020-07-15 07:33:54Z

Is there any way I get a meaningful debugging, I mean with all the files in place it should be possible to debug with source display, even if the Visual Studio versions don't match.

I think you could use Remote Debugger just as Pavel said. It will use the local VS2019 to debug the source files on the remote computer without VS2008.

First, you should install the remote tool or just copy the Remote Debugger folder into the remote computer and then config as this document said, run it as Administrator on the remote computer.

Then, use IIS to run your asp net source files(you have the whole project source files and output files) on the remote computer

And on your local computer, open VS2019, use Attach to Process to catch the process of your project from the remote machine.

More info you can see this official document about it.

Besides, you can also use Debugging Tools for Windows-----WinDbg.

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