Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Breakpoints are Not Working in Visual Studio - .NET Compact Framework (.NET CF)

Recently I had the issue while debugging a smart device application. All my breakpoints stop functioning. But if I ran the application in the device emulator the breakpoints are working fine.
So it was occurring only when I debug in an actual device (In my case Pocket PC).

After some trying I found that the problem is in the .NET CF which was installed in the Pocket PC.
To fix the thing,
1. Stop all the applications running in the Pocket PC (Do a soft restart or use the Runnning Programs tab in the System -> Memory).
2. Un install the .NET CF from the Pocket PC and soft reset the Pocket PC again.
3. Install the .NET CF in to the Pocket PC. (Also note that you can make the Visual Studio install the .NET CF by starting an application from Visual Studio.)
4. Connect the Pocket PC to the computer using Active Sync and try debugging. In most cases now the breakpoints should work.

If this did not fix the issue you will have to cold reset the Pocket PC and also I would instruct you to reinstall the SDKs (Windows Mobile 5/6 Pocket PC SDKs) if you have any installed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Problem is related to .netCF installed on PocketPC and and the .netCF version is used by Visual Studio at the time of debugging the application.
there are 3 solutions for this...
1. download the lated .netCF 2.0 service Pack from Microsoft site and install on your PC that process will install latest version of .netCF on PC as well as on you PocketPC through ActiveSync.(this the best solution)
2. uninstall .netCF on you PPC click on Start > Settings > select System tab > then click on Remove Programs ,here select all the options starting with Microsoft .NET CF ......etc and Remove them.
After removing them deploy you app using vs2005.(medium solution)
3. hard reset your device and deploy you app using vs2005.(Worst and last solution)

if any issue contact me ...
Sandeep Choudhary
schoudhary@xora.com