Resolved! Losing Hours to a Debugger Problem
Update 3 and Resolution: Good news and Bad News! The issue is resolved but it really looks like the problem was between the keyboard and the chair <shamefaced grin>.
I happened to notice that the debugger was fine on pages other than the one I was working on. I started a brand new page and copied over the key parts of the markup and code-behind. Debugging worked there too. I started examining the differences between the old (assumed corrupt) files and the newly-created (working) ones. Yikes! the aspx file had this: Inherits="salesitemstest" and the .vb file had this: Partial Class salesitemsgrid. No wonder the breakpoint wasn't being found... it could never be found in a class that wasn't being called!!!
I'm not going to lose more time probing how I managed to get this screwed up, but it was probably a copy/paste error at some point - my mistake, almost certainly. So if you've discovered this post while looking for the error message, just check that your Inherits and your partial class names are still in sync.
It's suspicious that my Web search for the error message text turned up lots of posts where the poster never reported a resolution to the problem. Does that mean that they, like me, discovered they had screwed it up themselves? Unlike me, they probably kept quiet about their goof and hoped nobody would notice. Oh well, live and learn. I'm debugging again! It's incredible how much I miss that capability. Back in the ASP Classic days, we used to Response.Write(value) to find out what was going on!
BTW, thanks to my MVP Lead Simran Chaudhry for helping with a rush support incident. Thanks also to Manish Jawa of Microsoft Support for the quick response (within minutes!) even though I didn't actually need it.
---
Update 2: So much for the VPC idea. I installed VWD 2008 Express on a new VPC and copied in my Web project files. Not a good idea. It seems to have copied whatever nasty thing is preventing the debugger from working. Now I've got my main machine and and a VPC version that blows past the breakpoints. It may be next week before the confusion over the support contract is resolved. Maybe I'll have to call in a few favours. I've lost 10 hours of work time on this so far.
---
Update 1: Okay, I chose a two-pronged approach. I built a new VPC and installed the Microsoft Web Platform 2.0 RC. While that's installing, I called Professional Technical Support. What? My support contract number expired on November 1, 2008. How can that be? Continuing to investigate, but this does not augur well for a fix to the Debugger problem today...
---
Last night, out of the blue, my Visual Studio 2008 Team System IDE started acting up on an ASP.NET project. If you do a search for "The breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document” you’ll find many, many angry posts and hopeful solutions. Nothing has worked for me yet.
After fighting with the broken debugger for several hours into the wee hours, I decided this morning to get professional support via an MSDN Support Incident.
What happens when I try to log into my MSDN subscription? “Sorry, we were unable to service your request.”
Sheesh! Did they know I was desperate?
Now I’m wondering whether to pursue the support route or just create a virtual PC, move everything over to a new VS environment and get back to some productivity.
I hope you’re having a better day than I am.
Ken