Fix VS .NET debugger when unable to debug by manually attaching to a process

The following steps helps me resolve a nasty VS.NET debugging issue I was having. When you launch the VS .NET debugger automatically by pressing the PLAY button or F5, debugging works just fine. However, if you try to manually attach to a process (like w3wp.exe in Windows Server 2003), the debugger is never able to load the debug symbols and it won''t stop on your breakpoints.

Last week I had a nasty issue: I couldn’t get the debugger to attach to a process while working on a MCMS 2002 project.

As MCMS developers know, you can’t just hit F5 to fire off the debugger, you have to build your project, manually attach to the web process, and then browse to your site. So this little issue was giving me fits. I finally cried uncle and used one of my PSS tickets you get with an MSDN subscription.

It was such an obscure fix, I decided to throw it up on my blog for others who may have this issue.

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