I've mentioned it before, but SysInternal's DebugView is a great utility. It allows you to get the Debug.WriteLine() strings from your application even when you're not attached with a debugger, as long as it was compiled in Debug mode. Very convenient.

Unfortunately, it's a bit hard to use when I'm also actually doing work with Visual Studio. It seems that some bits of VS are also logging calls with the OutputDebugString API call. I can live with the occasional message like this:

[3448] DllCanUnloadNow called for VSA7.dll
[3448] DllCanUnloadNow returned S_FALSE

but getting these:

[3448] Left. Enter HWND 90ea6

Running  Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers
Version 8.0.50727.51  (QFE.050727-5100)
Microsoft .NET Framework
Version 2.0.50727

8 Comments

• Chris said Tuesday, June 20, 2006 3:25:08 PM

  That's what filters are for. Just set it to exclude 3448 or whatever all the VS debug lines start with. My UPS software does the same thing, so i either have to set up filters, or unplug the USB interface and lose my auto hibernate and auto shutdown ability that the UPS can trigger.

• AvnerK said Tuesday, June 20, 2006 4:12:59 PM

  I can always filter, but since the 3448 is the Process ID for the current instance, it changes every time I run Visual Studio. This means I can either redefine the filter every time or try to guess all the possible messages and filter them out.

• SvenC said Monday, August 28, 2006 12:00:04 PM

  I tracked that down: it's actually caused by the latest Visual Source Safe addin: ssscc.dll I searched that dll for the offending text "Left, Enter HWND" and replaced the first character of that text in the dll with a null byte. So OutputDebugString will just output an empty string which is not appearing in my DebugView. Now I have silence in debugview again until my OutputDebugStrings are executed. HTH, SvenC

• Jake Scott said Monday, November 20, 2006 12:20:43 AM

  Just setup a filter in Debug View. In the exclude textbox type "Enter HWND" without the double quotes. Problem solved.

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