How do I attach Visual Studio to a process that is not started yet?

Question

I have .NET program that can\'t be run from Visual Studio for some reasons (Excel file created from an Excel 2010 template project) for which I need to debug startup events.

Answer 1

I was debugging a C++ plugin in an externally spawned process that crashed by throwing an exception at startup and this worked perfectly for me:

Add the free Reattach Extension for Visual Studio. Ask it to reattach to the process name before it is launched. It will pop a modal dialog saying it is waiting for the process name to launch.

Now launch the process and the Visual Studio debugger will attach immediately, catching exceptions and hitting breakpoints.