The debugger is not properly installed. Run setup to install or repair the debugger.

While trying to attach a Windows .NET Service running on a remote server to its source code on my developer machine in order to debug the service, I encountered the following Error:

Error: "The debugger is not properly installed. Run setup to install or repair the debugger."

As for the cause of the problem, I think it started happening since I installed the Beta 1 version of Visual Studio 2008 (Code Name Orcas), so that was my first guess as to what triggered the problem. After researching the matter through several search engines I came across the following solutions for fixing this problem:

Solution 1: Run the Visual Studio .NET Add / Remove feature from "Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs", by selecting the correct version of Visual Studio and clicking on "Change/Repair" button. In my case this solution did not fix the problem.

Solution 2: Reinstall .NET Framework debugging services.

• Open command prompt


• Type "cd /d %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\"


• regsvr32.exe mscordbi.dll

Unfortunately, this solution did not fix my problem either.

Solution 3: Manually register mdm.exe.

• Open command prompt
  
• Type "%CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\VS7Debug\mdm.exe" /regserver

This solution did not work for me either.

Final Solution: The problem seems to be in the path to the remote machine. The debugger doesn't seem to be able to access the network computer using the path specified. in the process attachment screen. In my case, the problem simply turned out to be due to the fact that I was trying to attach a process on a machine which was on a different domain, which did not allow access permission using our domain logon!

So the solution is to either add the remote server you want to attach a process from to the same domain as what you are on, or add your development pc to the other domain to be able to debug the remote server.

Pete Soheil
DigiOz Multimedia
http://www.digioz.com/