Remote debugging on x64 Windows Server 2003

Question

I had a web service installed on a 32-bit Windows Server 2003 machine. I was able to remotely debug it from my 64-bit Windows 7 machine using VS 2010, making the available x86 exe debugger available from a share on my machine. Everything worked fine until at the end of the week they decided to upgrade the server machine to the 64-bit version.

Now when I try to remotely debug the x86 debugger, it gives me an error:

When I use the x64 debugger, it does not throw an error, but does not load characters for the project, so I cannot debug it.

Any ideas as to why this is? What should I do differently?

Answer 1

Not sure if this is an option for you, but you can

• install VS to create the x86 executable (build parameters, target platform of the x86 platform).
• or if your web service is running in IIS, create an application pool that starts as an x86 process.

Go to the application pools in the IIS management console, right-click the application pool and select "Set Application Pool Settings ...". in the properties dialog, set Enable 32-bit Applications to True.

Thus, you should be able to use the x86 debugger (since it worked before).

---

Apparently, you can configure IIS 6 to work in x86 mode with:

%SystemDrive%\inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set w3svc/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 1 

then also run

 %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis -i 

Answer 2

make sure you do the following

• - if you have uptodate characters that you execute on the server

• - run the 64-bit version of msvsmon.exe

• - for your client in visual studios, debugging - joining a process - transport (remote) classifier (your server)

• - select the process and click "Attach"

you must have the same version of the executable and the symbols on the server and client