Question

I have created a WinForms application using one of VS2010 templates, but discovered that it does not throw database exceptions in debugging mode. I have to explicitly wrap a method into a try-catch block to view errors, otherwise it simply interrupts execution of method without showing any errors. I did not modify something in app config.

Answer 1

You probably are connecting to database in Form.Load event (Form1_Load for example). Exceptions thrown in Form.Load event will not bubble up the stack trace when the following are met:

1. You are running on a 64-bit version of Windows (whether your application is built for 32-bit or 64-bit doesn’t matter; only the bit depth of the OS)
2. You are debugging the application with Visual Studio (using default options for Exception catching)

For more information see this blog post: http://blog.adamjcooper.com/2011/05/why-is-my-exception-being-swallowed-in.html