Debugging in Visual Studio
Note
This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here
The Visual Studio debugger helps you observe the run-time behavior of your program and find problems. The debugger works with all Visual Studio programming languages and their associated libraries. With the debugger, you can break execution of your program to examine your code, examine and edit variables, view registers, see the instructions created from your source code, and view the memory space used by your application.
For a quick introduction to debugging and diagnostics in Visual Studio, see Debug, Profile, and Diagnose.
Debugger Windows Lists the different debugger windows.
Debugger Basics Discusses the fundamentals of using the Visual Studio debugger. Topics include debugging basics, execution control, attaching to a running program, Just-In-Time debugging, launching the debugger automatically, dumps, breakpoints, inspecting your program, handling exceptions, Edit and Continue, and using expressions in the debugger.
More Debugging Features Describes different debugging features.
Remote Debugging Describes how to set up and use remote debugging.
Debug Multithreaded Applications Describes how to debug multithreaded applications.
IntelliTrace Describes the IntelliTrace feature.
Debugging Applications Describes how to debug different kinds of applications.
Debugging User Interface Reference Provides reference information on the windows and dialog boxes you use when debugging your application. These topics are also available when you press F1 while you have focus on a debugging user interface element, such as the Breakpoints window.
Debug Interface Access SDK Describes the Microsoft Debug Interface Access Software Development Kit (DIA SDK). The DIA SDK provides access to debug information stored in program database (.pdb) files generated by Microsoft postcompiler tools.