2010-06-10

Visual Studio 2008 Crashes When You Stop Debugging After Rearranging Windows

I don't know what caused it... but somehow I managed to get Visual Studio 2008 in a state where it would crash if I tried rearranging debug and properties windows, etc and then later stopped the debugger.  Not only did it crash, but the app hung and would only close if I opened Task Manager and killed the devenv.exe process.

I started hunting and found this hotfix on MSDN, but then noticed in the comments a nicer solution to try before applying the hotfix.  The solution is simple:
  1. Start debugging
  2. Window >> Reset Window Layout
  3. Stop debugging
This worked great for me... your mileage may vary.  If it doesn't work, try downloading the hotfix.