Crash...Boom... Bang

A couple of days ago I ran into a weird problem. I figured I’d describe it and explain how I fixed it in case one of you runs into it, too.

I was debugging a simple page—several input controls and a submit button. All of a sudden the page started blowing upon execution of the button event handler. The stack trace simply lead into managed code, and since I don’t have debug symbols of those assemblies all I could figure out was that somewhere inside System.Web.UI.Control.OnBubbleEvent the code was throwing Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

I suspect the button handled its Click event (see below), and things got funky from that point on.

void IPostBackEventHandler.RaisePostBackEvent(string eventArgument)
{
   if (this.CausesValidation)
   {
      this.Page.Validate();
   }
  this.OnClick(new EventArgs());
  this.OnCommand(new CommandEventArgs(this.CommandName, 
                                  this.CommandArgument));
}

Now, prior to that my VS.NET crashed as I was in the middle of debugging. Actually, the worker process must’ve crashed and VS.NET couldn’t handle it, so it blew up to keep it company.

I headed to Google newsgroups, but couldn’t find anything. Then I spent another hour and a half debugging this glitch. Can’t do much debugging, though, when a simple button click causes managed code to throw an exception.

What’s the best way to fix anomalies in Windows? That’s right—reboot. After a reboot life got back to normal. Long live reboots! :)

When I once worked for a large company, the IT guy was handsomely paid. Yet he solved half of the computer problems with a simple reboot. He had a good job.

Fortunately, I've never forgotten that simple fix-it. Heck, I reboot my computer if my toaster doesn't work!!!!

that's why Win it's more human-friendly than Linux. Each reboot you can go to the bathroom, bar, wahtch tv, go to the coffee machine, socialize, even get a date.
long live reboots.

A reboot is not needed.

Killing the process aspnet_wp.exe worked for me. The next time I executed my asp.net page it was fine again.

Just found your blog via googling around since we're running in the same problem that you have.
Are there any ideas on how to circumvent this problem? We're experiencing it from time to time on our production machine and co-workers are actually angry about the applcation hanging until someone kill the process.

Juergen, unfortunately I don't know how to fix it other than by rebooting. :(

That was a real good solution - i hit Google - and i got ur solution...it is really amazing that mircosoft rocks and rocks you too and then you rock.

Thanks.

Thanks to Lars K for the tip.

I came accross this problem also, and I can confirm that it can be solved by pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE, and terminating the asp_wp.exe process. a full reboot is not required.