Visual Studio Remote Debugging

Each version of Visual Studio includes the remote debugging utilities.

It's called, msvsmon.exe.

The following is taken from here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/debugger/remote-debugging?view=visualstudio#fileshare_msvsmon

The utility is located in this folder:

Find msvsmon.exe in the directory matching your version of Visual Studio:

Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 17.0\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x64\msvsmon.exe

Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 17.0\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x86\msvsmon.exe

Once found, you can share the Remote Debugger folder across the network, with the target machine to debug.

On the target machine, follow these instructions: Remote debugging - Visual Studio (Windows) | Microsoft Learn

Starting the Remote Debugger Harness

Once you have shared the remote debugger folder with the target machine, open the folder in File Explorer, like this:

image.png

Right-click on the msvsmon.exe, and tell it to start with Administrator rights.

It will take a few seconds to start up.

Once running, a window like the following, will display:

image.png

When done debugging, simply close the window, to kill the debugger listener.

References

DotNet Startup Remote Debugging Hook

Allow Remote Debugging of Docker Containers


Revision #3
Created 14 October 2026 04:14:26 by glwhite
Updated 14 October 2026 04:33:14 by glwhite