I can't kill MyApp.vshost.exe

Question

I've managed to get myself in a state where I've no instances of devenv running, but still a MyApp.vshost.exe in the background (no visible windows or consoles).

I've tried TaskManager, ProcessExplorer and command line (taskkill /F /IM MyApp.vshost.exe), none of them complain, the command line even says 'PID 5824 stopped', but it's still there.

I know I can reboot, but I'd rather get to the bottom of this.

It doesn't look like it's this issue (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982551), because I can reboot no problem (just have in fact, so won't be able to provide any further diagnostics, sorry).

EDIT

This is how I got into this pickle:

alt text

Eat at Joes · Answer 1 · 2014-05-23T15:48:31.783

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I was able to kill my persistent vshost process by following these steps (VS2010):

open the properties of my executable project
in the "Debug" tab, uncheck "Enable the Visual Studio hosting process"
save the project file

That was it, the process stopped, and there was no need to restart Visual Studio.

edited May 23 '14 at 15:48

answered Dec 05 '13 at 20:09

Eat at Joes

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About the Visual Studio hosting process : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2069940/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-visual-studio-hosting-process – Yves M. Dec 08 '14 at 11:15
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Another easy way that worked in my case was to set a different project as the Startup Project. – Patrick Mar 22 '16 at 06:42

score 22 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 30 '10 at 13:58

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It seems to be the normal behaviour for this task. When you kill it the task is restarted. So i advice you to close Visual Studio, that closes the *.vshost.exe task.

answered Nov 30 '10 at 13:58

Nicolas

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Sorry, I didn't see that. So in Process explorer, your *.vshost.exe has no parent process ? – Nicolas Nov 30 '10 at 14:06
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@Nicolas, no, that's what was so weird. – Benjol Nov 30 '10 at 14:14
@Benjol, sorry for my misundertanding, but where does your App.vshost.exe come from? You shutdown VS and App.vshost.exe stays alive? – Nicolas Nov 30 '10 at 14:59
@Nicolas, yes, I must confess that I 'zapped' a VS which was taking too long to stop a debugging session. – Benjol Dec 01 '10 at 05:50
I bet he's got a hidden devenv – zumalifeguard Jul 22 '16 at 17:08

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

Maybe that's the same problem as described in https://stackoverflow.com/a/1582747/254041 (pending I/O processes):

The MSDN API ref says "TerminateProcess initiates termination and returns immediately. This stops execution of all threads within the process and requests cancellation of all pending I/O. The terminated process cannot exit until all pending I/O has been completed or canceled.". Which means so much as: your I/O can block this process (though I wonder how it can bring your process to 100%, I/O usually doesn't do that).

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 09 '11 at 17:36

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I had the same problem while working on a project with .NET 2.0 as target framework. Temporary changing the target framework to .NET 4.0 client did the job for me.

However, Iam unsure how this is (is it?) related to the file lock issue.

answered Mar 09 '11 at 17:36

binary101010

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I can't kill MyApp.vshost.exe

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