visual studio 2008 sp-1 skips breakpoint / You cannot get the breakpoints in external JS files to get hit when that code is called from a popup window

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Quick post on two new issue on the block related to Debugging/Breakpoint in Visual Studio 2008

  • After installing VS2008 SP1, single stepping through code does not work, misses break points and generally, it is unpredictable and unusable. It will generally hit the first break point but after that it is totally unpredictable.

       Solution is to Apply KB HOTFIX 957912

  • You cannot get the breakpoints in external JS files to get hit when that code is called from a popup window (Specific to IE 8)

Workaround as mentioned by Greggm in his blog :

IE 8 has a feature called Loosely-Coupled Internet Explorer (LCIE) which results in IE running across multiple processes.
Older versions of the Visual Studio Debugger get confused by this and cannot figure out how to attach to the correct process. You can work around this by disabling the process growth feature of LCIE. Here's how:

1. Open key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
2. If it doesn't exist, add new DWORD named TabProcGrowth
3. Set TabProcGrowth value = 0