Visual Studio 2008 keeps crashing

I'm running Visual Studio Team System Development Edition 2008 on Vista Business 64bit along with Resharper 4.5, Telerik Reporting 2009/Q2 and GhostDoc 2.5.9166.0 and it keeps crashing randomly. It typically happens when I start entering text into a .cs or text file. The event log gets an application error entry:

Faulting application devenv.exe, version 9.0.30729.1, time stamp 0x488f2b50, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 6.0.6002.18005, time stamp 0x49e03824, exception code 0xc0000374, fault offset 0x000ab0bf, process id 0xb0, application start time 0x01ca255374e4ec56.

Any thoughts?

user8119

Posted 2009-08-25T07:53:32.400

Reputation:

You might find good answers if you post this on stackoverflow.com as well. – Nathan Fellman – 2009-08-25T08:42:40.243

All of the suggestions had been tried before posting, it obviously had something to do with the interaction of addons. I upgraded to Windows 7 last week and haven't had any problems since. Unresolved mystery, I figure. – None – 2009-09-07T14:09:27.463

Did you run a memory test utility on the machine in question, and did it pass with flying colors after a good length of time? – Chris W. Rea – 2009-09-07T19:20:42.587

Answers

The exception code 0xC0000374 is STATUS_HEAP_CORRUPTION. This exception's cause may be related to what you were doing at the time of the crash, but it also may be related to something else you did earlier in the same Visual Studio session. The suggestions about disabling add-ons and upgrading to SP1 are good. I suspect that overclocking or faulty RAM could also cause this, but would probably also cause random bug checks (BSODs).

You said that once you upgraded to Windows 7, the problem went away. Windows 7 has a new fault tolerant heap (FTH). If you saw the crash once with Windows 7 and never again, that might be the FTH mitigating whatever bug caused the heap corruption.

bk1e

Posted 2009-08-25T07:53:32.400

Reputation: 1 579

Thanks for your answer. I actually got a random crash today for the first time after installing 7. I did also get random reboots before the upgrade, so I think there might be something wrong with my RAM. Need to run some diagnostics. – None – 2009-09-08T16:04:08.610

Try removing the extensisons (ReSharper, Telerik & GhostDoc) one by one and see if the problem goes away - it might be in one of those or due to an interaction between them. If so reinstall and see if the problem goes away.

If that doesn't work repair/reinstall Visual Studo itself.

ChrisF

Posted 2009-08-25T07:53:32.400

Reputation: 39 650

I'd guess it has to do with the extensions you have installed. To disable them temporarily, start VS and click on Tools -> Add-in manager. Deselect all "Start" entries and restart Visual Studio.

Adrian Grigore

Posted 2009-08-25T07:53:32.400

Reputation: 1 773

Ensure you are running the latest version of ReSharper. There was a known issue with one of the beta release that would cause a random crash when trying to edit anything related to HTML or CSS or when using the < or > keys. I would suggest disabling ReSharper first.

BinaryMisfit

Posted 2009-08-25T07:53:32.400

Reputation: 19 955

Make sure that you have SP1 for VS2008 installed. and Latest version of ReSharper that supports SP1.

Tony

Posted 2009-08-25T07:53:32.400

Reputation: 1 156

From the OP's version number it appears that the latest version is already installed. I've just checked my install (known to be up to date) and it's the same number. – ChrisF – 2009-08-25T12:20:18.140