I have been trying to debug an infinite loop in a VB.NET ASP application. It's a PITA to find and I have been forced to stop and restart execution numerous times to insert additional debugging statements to isolate the cause.

I'd have expected clicking the "Stop Debugging" button in the VS IDE to either kill the execution thread or recycle the copy of IIS it uses when execution is stopped, but that's not what I am seeing. Instead, a restarted program containing an infinite loop appears to CONTINUE running from the point where it was killed. So after restart, I appear to have two instances of code running in the IDE, the original infinite loop I killed, and a new one from the restart. This results in even slower performance because it's now iterating two infinite loops. And it's not possible to tell which iteration is hitting breakpoints and debugging statements because both iterations are running at the same time but are at different points in the code. Kill it and restart it again and now there are three instances.

The only way I have found to really kill an existing IIS process is to restart the VS IDE, time consuming and tedious after numerous restarts. Is there and option hidden somewhere in VS to recycle the IIS server so it is not necessary to restart VS every time this happens?

Hi there..

You are using the build in IIS?? (I don´t remember it name).. What if you kill it after you hit stop (it's not stopped by default)...

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Gonzalo

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OK, but how?

You could try recycling the IIS Application Pool:

1. Start IIS Manager (inetmgr)

2. Expand until you see Application Pools

3. Find your pool, right-click it and choose Recycle.

Maybe that helps.

Cheers,

Imar

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Imar Spaanjaars
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Hi Imar! Thanks for the suggestion. I actually found and fixed the loop while awaiting an answer, but reintroduced the bug to test your suggestion.

Alas, the code continues to run despite both recycling and manually stopping/starting all available pools. Cycling the service works, but that's as painful as restarting VS.

It looks like the best answer is to avoid coding infinite loops!

Sounds like solid advice.... ;-)

Imar

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Imar Spaanjaars
http://Imar.Spaanjaars.Com
Follow me on Twitter

Author of Beginning ASP.NET 4.5 : in C# and VB, Beginning ASP.NET Web Pages with WebMatrix
and Beginning ASP.NET 4 : in C# and VB.
Did this post help you? Click the button below this post to show your appreciation!