Scott Hanselman

A day may come when you want to turn off the Debug dialog that appears when a .NET program has an unhandled exception.

Option 1: Registry key from Enabling JIT Debugging

For an application that includes managed code, the common language runtime will present a similar dialog to JIT-attach a debugger. The registry key that controls this option is called HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\.NETFramework\DbgJITDebugLaunchSetting.

• If value = 0, prompt the user by means of a message box. The choices are:
  • Continue. This results in a stack dump and process termination.
  • Attach a debugger. In this case, the runtime spawns the debugger listed in the DbgManagedDebugger registry key. If none, control is returned, and the process is terminated.
• If value = 1, simply return control. This results in a stack dump, after which the process is terminated.  (No more dialog)
• If value = 2, spawn the debugger listed in the DbgManagedDebugger registry key.

Option 2: If you want to disable the JIT debug dialog, but still want an error dialog:

Visual Studio.NET|Tools|Options|Debugging|Just-In-Time and deselect "Common Language Runtime" and now you’ll get an OK/Cancel dialog instead of the select a Debugger Dialog.  Note: The registry entry from Option 1 above will need to be 0 for the dialog to show up.

Thanks to Eric Deslauriers of Corillian QA for these tips!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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