textpad won't open when debugging

[brodie]

Hi,

I'm experiencing a annoying problem with Textpad. When I have a VC.NET 2002 debugging session running, I can't start Textpad from explorer. This appears to happen when the program I am debugging has written files to the disk. The files that I try to open don't have anything to do with the program being debugged. (Note: the program is running under debugger, not stopped on a breakpoint).

For instance, I highlight a file in explorer and choose "Open in Textpad" from the context menu. Explorer will hang (no redraws) and Textpad will not open. Otherwise the system operates without a problem. At this stage I cannot start Textpad from the Run menu either, although it would have started if I had tried before trying to open a file from explorer.

As soon as I stop the debugger Textpad will continue to open the file and explorer will start redraws again.

It appears to me like system/Textpad is hung in a DDE wait. Has anyone else experienced this problem? Anyone have any ideas where the problem may lie? (e.g. Textpad or in my program that I'm debugging).

Regards,
Brodie

[helios]

As you have already surmised, the debugger is blocking DDE messages. The work around is to avoid using DDE for the files associated to TextPad.