How do you disable Just-in-Time debugging messages?

Question

In a relatively new installation of Windows Server 2008 R2, there are occasional popup messages about Just-in-time debugging. These may come up in w3wp.exe when a search bot accesses an asp page, for example. These messages are local Windows popups, not in browsers.

I cannot debug "just-in-time", however, because there are no and never have been any debuggers on the server. Microsoft is kind enough to tell my I don't have a VS2010 license to debug when I click debug. This makes the popup messages pretty useless, particularly since they contain no real information and the information causing the error is generally in the logs.

According to this link and this SO question, I disabled the AeDebug\Debugger keys, and the DbgManagedDebugger keys did not exist. This had no effect on the error messages.

How can I disable these Just-in-time debugging popup messages?

Answer 1

It is definitely the AeDebug\Debugger key, sounds like you didn't "disable" it properly or overlooked the 32-bit version of the key.

Deleting vsjitdebugger.exe from the c:\windows\syswow64 and system32 directories should remove the dialog as well. That's the program that displays this dialog and is referenced in the AeDebug key.

Also consider uninstalling Visual Studio since you have no use for it.

Answer 2

Execute these PowerShell statements to disable the JIT debugger:

Remove-itemproperty -Path "HKLM:SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug" -Name "Debugger"
Remove-itemproperty -Path "HKLM:SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework" -Name "DbgManagedDebugger"
Remove-itemproperty -Path "HKLM:SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug" -Name "Debugger"
Remove-itemproperty -Path "HKLM:SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework" -Name "DbgManagedDebugger" 

Answer 3

More precise solution is to disable debugging for a single process, by excluding it from the debugging list.

For example, if your case is to disable debugging for the IIS application, you should add your process name (w3wp.exe) to the key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\Currentersion\AeDebug\AutoExclusionList

New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\Currentersion\AeDebug\AutoExclusionList" -Name "w3wp.exe" -Value "1" -PropertyType DWORD

(based on https://docs.microsoft.com/pl-pl/windows/desktop/Debug/configuring-automatic-debugging)