I have a bug that only occurs in release mode, which is a problem because I am not able to regularly debug my code. The breakpoint says "The breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document." I have tried many of the other solutions people have posted about this problem, but none of them seem to work for release mode. Are there any suggestions on how to find a bug in release mode or how to regularly debug code in release mode?
You need to enable debug symbols in your project.
If this is a C++ Project, you need to do 2 things to get debug info:
1) In the "Project Settings" under "Configuration Properties" -> "C/C++" -> "General", you need to set "Debug Information Format" to "Program Database (/Zi)".
2) In the "Project Settings" under "Configuration Properties" -> "Linker" -> "Debugging" make sure you set the "Generate Debug Info" to "Yes (/DEBUG)".
Then, the build (compile and link) process will generate a PDB with debug info... typically next to your exe file but with a pdb extension.
Now when you run the project from Visual Studio, you should be able to debug and set breakpoints.
Other languages have similars settings although in slightly different locations.