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Troubleshooting Internal Error in the .NET Runtime

This problem was the most infuriating and time consuming problem that I’ve ever dealt with.  The first part of this post might be a bit of rambling, so if you want to jump to the details, just click here.

I noticed the first symptoms when I couldn’t debug a web site from within Visual Studio 2010. The below error was being shown when the local development web server was trying to load.

WebDev.WebServer40.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

I initially thought it was a bug in Visual Studio or the .NET Framework, so I verified all of the patches and services packs. After downloading and installing the Cassini development web server replacement for the default Visual Studio web server, I continued to get the same error.

The system event logs showed two error occurring relating to the vshost.exe process.

Event 1:
Application: MyWebSite.vshost.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an internal error in the .NET Runtime at IP 791A8BBD (79140000) with exit code 80131506.

Event 2:
Faulting application MyWebSite.vshost.exe, version 10.0.30319.1, stamp 4ba2084b, faulting module clr.dll, version 4.0.30319.1, stamp 4ba1d9ef, debug? 0, fault address 0x00068bbd.