Question

I am using IIS 6 on 2003. I have created a HTTP handler dll that inherits from IHttpAsyncHandler. The dll builds into the inetpub\www8080root\common\bin directory. It is meant to intercept all requests.

The web site is set to monitor port 8080. I have created a common folder in the www8080root directory and have created a virtual directory in II6 to point to it.
I created a web.config file in the common directory

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<system.web>
    <compilation debug="true" defaultLanguage="c#" />
    <httpHandlers>
        <add verb="*" path="*"
            type="x2Handler.x2Handler, x2Handler" />
    </httpHandlers>
</system.web>
</configuration>

When I access http://localhost:8080/common/index.html the HTTP handler causes a crash of w3wp.exe, when I look in the event logs I can see the error within the handler that caused the crash. When I set a breakpoint within VS 2005 the code it doesn’t get hit.

In order to debug I need to somehow attach to the process when it is running under IIS but as soon as it processes a request, it crashes.

How do I debug a HTTP Handler dll under IIS? I can’t see a aspnet_wp.exe process to attach to as described here: C#, Debugging an HTTPHandler

EDIT:
By adding Debugger.Break() I now receive the message “w3wp.exe has triggered a breakpoint” and it allows me to select a debug environment, but it loads without symbols

No symbols are loaded for any call stack frame. The source code cannot be displayed.

I set Tools->Options->Debugging->Enable Just My Code
I set the path to the common/bin location to load symbols from. Any manually set breakpoints still display:

The breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document.

EDIT:
When it loads it appears to be looking for the symbols of ntdll.pdb. Even if I manually load the symbol file for the httpHandler it makes no difference.
The code is definitely executing though.

Answer 1

The problem was that .Net had been installed prior to the version IIS. I had noticed the “Edit configuration” button was disabled and found this site http://www.warfiblog.com/edit-configuration-disabled.
Following the instructions:

You will need to go to Start -> Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 -> Visual Studio Tools -> Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt. On the prompt write down this command:
aspnet_regiis -r
The above command will register dot net with IIS and now the button will also be enabled.

In doing that it fixed the debugging issue!