Debugging Technique Suggestions

C

Charles Law

I have a VB.NET MDI application that terminates for no reason. Sometimes it
will run for ages, and sometimes it terminates after a few seconds. It
always seems to occur following some user action, usually clicking on a
top-level menu item. I am using Infragistics 2004 Vol 1 for menus and
docking regions.

Can anyone suggest ways of tracking the cause down? The main MDI form is
started with Application.Run(New MyForm), which is inside a Try ... Catch
block. When the application terminates unexpectedly no exception is thrown,
and therefore none caught. I have put a break-point immediately after the
Run statement but it is never reached. The MDI form's OnClosing method is
not called, so I can't find a way of trapping the cause of the error. I have
visited Debug | Exceptions and set all exceptions to break into the
debugger, but still nothing. I am just dumped back into the IDE without any
message or warning.

The problem also occurs outside the IDE, when the application is run
stand-alone.

Does anyone have any ideas about how I can trap the cause of this problem?

TIA

Charles
 
C

CJ Taylor

Before you do your application run, addhandler to the
Application.ThreadException event. Sometimes I get errors that sneak in
there...

HTH,
CJ
 
C

Charles Law

Hi CJ

I added a handler but have managed to get it to abort in the usual way,
without entering the handler. Any other thoughts? Anyone?

Charles
 
A

AlexS

Hi, Charles

use standard debugging techniques. You can suspect everything - for example
there could by try-catch block, which ends application in case of exception.
So, you have to find sequence of events, which leads to problem, take app
into debugger or insert tracing statements and trace execution until you
find the exact cause.
Because you use 3rd party controls you have to keep in mind that problem
might exist there and not in your code.

Happy bug hunting!
Not much help, huh?
Alex
 
C

Charles Law

Thanks Alex, but I have pretty much tried the usual suspects.

I think I have to suspect the Infragistics stuff, because it always seems to
happen when I click on a top-level menu item, and at that point no
application code executes.

Having said that, I have another app using the same Infragistics stuff, and
this never happens. Therefore, I must be doing something that makes the
Infragistics code unstable in some way, or otherwise upsets it. Finding out
what is the hard part!

Charles
 

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