Debugger problem "The breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document

There was a similar question posed on the C++ forum back in February to which I responded yesterday, but unfortunately, did not get a response. I am therefore putting this question in the VB forum.

I have a VB 2005 project which is actually an add-in to Outlook 2003, which was I was able to debug fine until earlier this week. Now I cannot debug it at all - the message in the subject is displayed when I hover the mouse over the breakpoint which shows a yellow icon in place.

Can anyone here tell me what I should do to correct this

Visual Basic9

Make sure that you are compiling in Debug mode not Release mode. Also make sure that you have compiled your most recent version. If you have made changes to your source since the last compilation, you will not be able to debug it.

I'm not sure if the same holds true for C++ as I've never used it, so YMMV.

Jim Wooley
http://devauthority.com/blogs/jwooley

I too have a similar problem, but I do not see any way to specify a "Debug" build. My project is a class library and I can only Build it. If I hit F5 it forces the "Debug" build which in subsequent testing will cause the de**** to fire.

Click on the Menu item for Build then select Configuration Manager. Here you can set the configuration for each project in your solution. In order for the ide to debug your library, it needs to be able to find the debug symbols which are generated when you build with the debug flag turned on. This is easiest set by setting the configuration option to debug.

As far as building a class library, you can do it any of a number of ways. Selecting the library, right clicking and selecting Build, or using the build menu option.

Jim Wooley
http://devauthority.com/blogs/jwooley

I have checked as you suggested, but all items are as they should be and I still see the same error. This worked in March, but stopped suddenly just before I raised the original question.

Hope somebody can provide some assistance here. Otherwise, I will have to go back to VB6.

hi,

I have same problem ,, I built a shared add-in it worked fine but now it does not work, when i set start external program to Word.exe it does not work but when i set the external program to Excel.exe it works,

in the former case (word.exe) i can not debugg it and at the breakpoints i get message like "the breakpiont will not currentyl be hit , no symbols have been loaded for this document,"

but if i set start external program to excel it dont get this message.

I had the same problem. I fixed it for a moment by changing the project's "Generate Debug Info" option from "None" to "PDB Only. " To get there, right click the project name in the Solution Explorer and choose properties. Then choose the Compile tab on the left. Click on the Advanced Compiler Settings.

However, the problem returned...

I have had this problem on and off, particularly with a class file that is part of a web service, and read many suggestions to it. Certain things DO help, such as debug building the assembly before setting the breakpoint, and set breakpoints right at the first line of code that you would be stepping into. Also go to Tools >> Options and under the debugging tree node select General. There you need to uncheck "Enable Just My Code"...this usually helps but it also seems to mysteriously re-check itself. I am fairly well convinced due to the inconsistancies here that this is a flat out BUG.

I've seen this once. I closed the app, re-opened it, clean and re-built it in debug & release mode, which seemed to work. Looks like a bug to me

I'm having this same problem. It started when I re-installed XP Pro after having done the initial development work on Vista (Vista has too many security and UI problems). I've tried a number of things to get around the problem, including your suggestion above, but it didn't make any difference either. I also noticed that the source file that I'm attempting to set a breakpoint in gets the "readonly" blue flag set on VS's tab for the file as soon as I do a "start debug"/F5. I don't know if that's related or not. If I look at VS's "output" from the compilation and loading, it clearly is not loading the symbols for the project/class that's giving the problem; the "main" and another project/class both get their symbols loaded OK. But I don't know why or how to fix it.

I'm beginning to believe that it's a VS problem, or something that is, at least, very obscure.

Tom

If you are using the vb profile, then when you hit F5 you will get a debug build, but if you hit build you will get a retail executable. The simplest way to get things working again is to go to delete the bin directory under the solution/project path and then hit F5 again.

Hope this helps,

I'm getting this very same problem and having absolutely no luck fixing it. The problem started after I moved the app from my local machine to an actual web server and upgraded my computer from Windows 2000 SP4 to Windows XP SP2.

I can't delete the contents of the Bin directory since this is an ASP.NET application and in VS 2005 I have not been able to find a "bin" directory where it compiles all the code (which I really hate by the way).

So are we saying this is a known problem that essentially has no solution Man, I'm up the creek if so.

I need to develope a PPC2003 app via VS2005 using the VB.NET IDE. I just created a simple single button application that when clicked shows a "Hello World" messagebox. If I run it in the emulator, the breakpoint works perfectly. However if I deploy and run from the device, the breakpoint disables as indicated in this thread.

Is there no help for this Is this the kind of thing I might call MS directly on and hope to get some help with If I can't get this solved, I'm in real trouble...

There are a couple of reasons why you could be getting the yellow icon:

PDB not present or doesn't match the executable
PDB doesn't match the source
DLL hasn't been loaded.

What's the exact description that you are getting

Alright, this CANT be it. Anyone else try (re)installing the .NET Framework v2.0 SDK I downloaded all 300 something mbs of it, installed it, ran the same app I mentioned above and BAM! Breakpoint hit. Problem solved. Could it be you guys need to (re)install the SDK too