Visual Studio 2005 locks up when attaching to process

Question

I have a simple C++ DLL that implements a few custom actions for a WiX installer.

Debugging the custom actions is usually simple: put up a temporary dialog box at the beginning of the action, and attach to the process when the dialog box appears.

But today, whenever I attach to the process, I get the "Microsoft Visual Studio is Busy" bubble appearing at the bottom of the screen. I cannot figure out where this is coming from. Any ideas?

Answer 1

After hours of trying to figure this out, I realized that the problem was that I had debugging symbols enabled in Tools->Options->Debugging->Symbols. The latency in looking up symbols was leading to the apparent lockup.

Clearing the "Search the above locations only when symbols are loaded manually" seems to have alleviated the problem.