VS 2008 Debugger does not step through

Over the past week, I've had a horrible time with my VS 2008 debugger. Breakpoints hit. There is no problem in that. However, its when I try to step through the code that it fails. It just skips all over the place as though I've hit the F5 key and it lands up breaking at another point.

I tried everything from re-installing/repairing VS 2008; installing SP1 as well. Nothing seemed to fix the problem.

After some time chasing down wrong errors on my output window, I finally decided to call it quits and post on StackOverflow, hoping the community could help me figure out the solution.

Sure enough, one of the questions already posted brought me to the solution.

Apparently this is a known issue, the gist of which is the following:

• Breakpoints in parallelized loops are eventually ignored after multiple hits
• Stopping and starting threads causes breakpoints to be missed
• Visual Studio may crash when you debug multiple processes at the same time
• Stepping over a disabled breakpoint when you debug a native application turns into a "go"
• Stepping when you debug a managed multithreaded application can randomly turn into a "go"
• Running the "Step Over" command while you are debugging multiple processes causes a deadlock

The one in red above was my exact problem.

Thankfully, there is a fix for it which can be downloaded: Fix for Visual Studio 2008 debugger not working

Once using the above said fix, I came across another issue:

Loaderlock was detected

Attempting managed execution inside OS Loader lock. Do not attempt to run managed code inside a DllMain or image initialization function since doing so can cause the application to hang.

After a bit of investigation it looks like some other running applications might cause this problem. Of what I saw the most, many people seemed to be complaining about iTunes. The other software I noticed causing this was grooveshark (flash since it is what grooveshark is based on. GrooveShark itself does not cause the problem).

GPS is in the algorithm

I recently had the opportunity to use two different GPS systems, one by Mio and the other by Magellan. Apart from the fact that the interfaces varied greatly I was wondering how the underlying technology worked. Reading lots of reviews and stumbling upon a site catered to GPS systems ( GPS Magazine ) I finally found that Mio, Magellan, Garmin, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and probably every other person who makes use of maps in their products uses data provided by either Navteq or TeleNav. After all the reviews (that have been extremely well done by the site) it boils down to the fact that it is the algorithm that makes the difference in providing the routes.

How intelligence is built into the system is a whole different issue, but just providing the shortest routes from the point of departure to the point of destination itself seems like a major task. I was just wondering how primitive the traveling salesman/shortest path algorithms might be in comparison to what these guys might have built to provide the routing.

However, none of the systems seem to have enough intelligence to know how to take shortcuts. Probably its there on the higher end systems, but then I haven't tested/tried any of them. Sometime in the future I see myself sitting in a car, punching in my destination and not even having to lift another finger. I will be there. (Considering Lexus already has the autopark feature done)

Take your LJ and run with it...

Photo from (Vijeth)

I was always skeptical of shifting to another blogging platform because I thought that all of my earlier posts would be lost. I did recently shift however and thanks to the requirement of a friend, learnt that I can now safely backup my posts as well as comments and move.

We’ve both had our blogs on LJ and she recently shifted over as well. So she asked me if I knew any way to transfer the posts as well as comments. A little Googling and I found this tool called LJArchive. It allows you to take a complete backup of your data on LJ and export it to a XML file that Wordpress can then import.

Amazingly (and I’m not sure since when), Wordpress can consume quite a few formats. Plus I can also now take a backup of my existing wordpress blog, which is a feature I’ve always looked for in blogging platforms. I believe the same should hold good for any web application out on the Internet. You should be able to take your data and run with it. If not, its not “your” data per se.