# How to: Collect a Call Stack to Track Down the Cause of Visual Studio Crash or Freeze Issues

**Description**:

If you see Visual Studio IDE instability, in which DevExpress IDE Tools might be involved, you can capture the problem's call stack. This can help determine the cause of the crash.

**Answer**:

The guide below assumes that your Visual Studio is in one of two following states:
- Frozen
- Running normally (you will need to reproduce the error or crash)

Regardless of the current state, you will need to run another Visual Studio process. Configure it as debugger, and attach it to the other process in order to obtain the required call stack.

Follow these steps below to attach to a running Visual Studio instance:

1. Run a new Visual Studio instance.

2. In the **Tools** | **Options…** dialog, select the Debugging node and uncheck the "Enable Just My Code" check box.


3. Select Debug -> Attach to Process.. or press the **Ctrl+Alt+P** key combination.
4. In the "Attach to Process" dialog box, find the Visual Studio instance that you want to attach from the "Available processes" list:


If the process runs under a different user account, select the "Show processes from all users" check box.

>NOTE: If you use Visual Studio 2012+ and want to debug the Visual Studio XAML designer in a .NET Framework project, attach to the XDesProc.exe process instead of devenv.exe.

Make sure that the type of code you want to debug is listed. Click **Select…** to open the "Select Code Type" dialog. In this dialog, activate the "Automatically determine the type of code to debug" option and click **OK**:


>NOTE: Make sure that the Managed code is present in the "Attach to:" text box after you click **OK**.

Click **Attach**.

5. Select the **Debug | Windows | Exception Settings** menu item or press the **Ctrl+Alt+E** key combination. The "Exception Settings" tool window appears.


6. Select the "Common Language Runtime Exceptions" item in the "Break when Thrown" list and uncheck its check box:


7. In the debugged version of Visual Studio, perform the actions to reproduce the issue. Once the issue is reproduced, the Visual Studio instance catches the exception that is attached to the debugged process. If the Visual Studio crash has already occurred, skip this step.

If an exception is not thrown (for example, Visual Studio is in the freeze stage), click **Break All** on the Debug tool bar or press **Ctrl+Alt+Break** to start collecting call stacks:


8. Open the **View | Other Windows | Command Window** tool window or press **Ctrl+Alt+A**.

9. Run the "Debug.ListCallStack /AllThreads /ShowExternalCode" command.

10. Copy and save its output in a new file (for example, use Notepad).

11. Save the file and send the obtained call stacks to our [Support Center](https://supportcenter.devexpress.com/ticket/list) for researching.

12. Optional. Use the "Debug->Save Dump As..." menu item to save the [dump file](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/debugger/using-dump-files?view=vs-2019&redirectedfrom=MSDN&viewFallbackFrom). This helps our developers analyze the cause of the problem.