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Every time I attempt to start a local debugging session in VS2013 Professional on a Windows 8 64-bit machine, I receive the following error:

Operation taking longer than expected

"A 64-bit debugging operation is taking longer than expected. This may be caused by incompatibilities with 3rd party networking software. See help for troubleshooting these issues."

followed shortly by:

Error message that I receive when starting a debugging session

"Unable to start program. The Microsoft Visual Studio Debugging Monitor (MSVSMON.EXE) does not appear to be running on the remote computer Please see Help for assistance on configuring remote debugging"

To start the debugging session, I press the "Local Windows Debugger" button:

"Local Windows Debugger" button

Nothing scary there: definitely not remote debugging.

Things I've tried:

  • Installing the Remote Tools for Visual Studio 2013
  • Running these tools whilst attempting to debug.
  • Following the instructions on this SO answer.
  • Turning off my ZoneAlarm firewall completely (although running MSVSMON.EXE manually does not cause it to ask me for permissions... Is it even running a server?)
  • Adding an exception to the Windows Firewall for the monitor
  • Setting MSVSMON.EXE to "No Authentication" mode
  • Checking my "HOSTS" file: Only comments.
  • Restarting

Further symptoms:

  • Only happens when debugging 64-bit software.
  • Happens no matter what language (C++, C# both have the same issue)

Any help in resolving this would be great.


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This seemed to work for me: stackoverflow.com/questions/12252969/… –  Russ B Jun 13 at 0:46

5 Answers 5


Unfortunately this does not work.

Only uninstalling ZoneAlarm and then rebooting seems to help, at least on my system using Windows 8.1.

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This is rather strange but ZoneAlarm definitely causes issues with 64 bit debugging. Turning it off (exiting the program) does not work. Only full uninstall works. –  Mensur Apr 9 at 21:10

You can try also to enable incoming UDP 3702

The windows firewall has a rule described as so:

Inbound rule to allow Visual Studio to discover remote debuggers running on the local network [UDP 3702]

Good Luck

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If you have IDM (Internet Download Manager) installed, and if you have enabled "Advanced Browser Integration" in it, do disable that "Advanced Browser Integration" feature. It shall solve the problem. It did for me..!!!

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This setting "Enable 64-bit process for Enhanced protected mode" in Internet Explorer caused my trouble. Silverlight 64 bit cannot be debugged. Turn it off.

enter image description here

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Mine was already off unfortunately. Have an up-vote anyways! –  AStupidNoob May 23 at 8:10

I ran into this with Zone Alarm as well. In my case I added an exception for the Visual Studio 12.0 folder in Program Files and another exception for both devenv.exe and msvsmon.exe (in the Remote Debugger\x64 folder) as Trusted Processes. I don't get the Windows message box about the operation taking to long anymore.

I would have commented on an answer higher up but I don't have 50 reputation yet, so this gets a new answer for it.

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