RESOLVED! Flex Builder 3 Debugger Stopped Working!!

RESOLVED! Flex Builder 3 Debugger Stopped Working!! March 11, 2008

Posted by therush in Adobe, Flex.
Tags: debug flex
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HELLO WORLD,

This one shall never be forgotten. After a couple hours more of troubleshooting this issue I returned to a dialog setting I visited once before. But this time I tried something a little different;

As I stated before, if I debug my Flex app, the app runs in the browser but the debugger is unable to connect. So I ran it again. As the debugger was trying to connect I went to the running app in the browser. I right-clicked on the app bringing up the Flash Player context menu. I clicked on the Debugger menu item (see image below).

Debugger in Menu

This then brought up the familiar Flash Player Debugger dialog box (see image below)

Debugger Setting

Now in the past I would simply click on the Connect button, but with no success. I then decided to specify Other Machine and entering my localhost IP address (I tried entering Localhost without success). I then clicked on the Connect button. Suddenly a change occurred on the Flex Builder interface. I first though that the process of waiting for the debugger to connect timed out, but Low and Behold! The debugger connected!! I couldn’t believe my eyes. Was it that simple all along? I stopped the debugger and started it again with my breakpoints. Again the debugger connected … without complaint. I am now a happy camper.

I’ve been suffering headaches for the past couple of days (even today). This issue only served to make them worse. I even dreamed about it last night. However now I can clear my mind and rest easy that my Flex Builder Debugger is Back! (unfortunately so are my headaches)

Thanks all who commented on my last post for the help. Even though none of them provided a solution, I learned a lot along the way.

Comments»

1. Tom Chiverton - March 12, 2008: If you need to do that, maybe you don’t have the latest debug Player.
2. therush - March 12, 2008: Hi Tom,

Actually, I used the code in my previous post to confirm that I am using the very latest version of the Debug Flash Player. In addition, I have uninstalled the Flash Player (using the Adobe supplied uninstaller), reinstalled the Debug Flash Player, and restarted the PC several times.

By the way, the debugger never stopped working when debugging AIR apps. In fact I ported my Flex 3 app to n AIR app and continued my testing and debugging the Flex app as an AIR app. That was a learning exercise in itself. I have to encapsulate the Flex specific script and the AIR specific script into two different classes. Then depending on which project I am working with (Flex or AIR) it would use the appropriate classes. Fortunatly I deployed the Flex app as an AIR app and not the other way around.

Thanks for the tip anyway.
3. Tom Carden - April 1, 2008: Brilliant! Thanks for posting this, I’ve been googling on and off for a few weeks now trying to find out how to re-enable break-points since I updated some combination of flash player, flex builder and mac os. Setting the local IP address specifically fixed it for me too.

Definitely a weird bug, since the debugger was working perfectly when an error was thrown, but the debug player would hang if any breakpoints were set.

Thanks again!
4. Johanes - April 10, 2008: Awesome! thanks dude for publishing this, finally I found out what went wrong and my Flex Builder can connect back to debugger.

Thanks heaps!
5. Mitek - April 21, 2008: I had the same problem and after reading this post I right-clicked on Debugger and there I saw really weird thing – it was trying to connect to 192.168.100 (non-existing address in my network), so I simply selected the Localhost and it worked.

Thanks for the post!

Cheers,
Dmitri.
6. Saqlain Abbas - April 22, 2008: Excellent!! thanks therush. It also solved my problem
7. vijay - May 24, 2008: Thanks a lot man….. it really helped me ……. i was unable 2 connect to debugger since two days now it got resolved …. now i hope i can meet my deadline if everything else goes right
8. riasol - June 9, 2008: Thanks for your publication. I had similar problem, i a your solution but after testing i found that problem with connection is by missing entry in windows domain resolving file (hosts). After creating “127.0.0.1 localhost” line flash debugger connects with “localhost” radio checked. But why debuggers worked before if there was not a line…?
9. Max - June 17, 2008: Interesting — I’m getting the same symptoms and have tried pretty much everything described in this and the prior article and still haven’t had any luck. I’ve got the debug player version 9.0.124 installed. Upon changing the debugger settings to my local IP address, I get the following alert from the browser:

“A connection to the debugger or profiler could not be established by Adobe Flash Player 9″.

Anyone else had similar issues? Suggestions?
10. fabiopedrosa - July 11, 2008: Thanks, same thing happend here.
11. Aaron Leavitt - July 15, 2008: Not sure why that worked but it did. I’ve never had to click the “connect” at all before, but once specifying and it worked. Thanks!
12. SOG knives - July 17, 2008: SOG knives…

Interesting ideas… I wonder how the Hollywood media would portray this?…
13. Mark Ledford :: Fix for when Flex and your debug flash player won’t connect for a debug session - August 6, 2008: [...] this guy wasted hours finding a fix to this strange issue so I didn’t have to. Right click on the swf and click on “debugger” in the flash [...]
14. Geraldo Andrade - August 9, 2008: Muito obrigado!
Você não sabe a que ponto minha paciência foi-se. Eu fiquei muito puto por nao saber o que fazer com este problema no meu flex builder 3. Os fóruns de flex aqui no Brasil não sabem de nada, bronca de sistema ninguem consegue resolver.
Thank you so much!
You don’t know how my patience vanished. I was really angered for doesn’t know what to do with this problem in my flex builder 3. That forums here in Brazil don’t know anything, a great system problem nobody can solve.

Thanks again!
15. Scott - August 27, 2008: The problem I encountered is related to enabling the profiler. The solution was posted at http://www.fingersdancing.net/2008/06/flex-debugger-crashing-eclipse-safari.html and has to do with the PreloadSwf line in the mm.cfg file. Once I commented out the line the debugger worked as expected for both IE and Firefox.
16. Annoyed User - September 11, 2008: I’ve reinstalled the latest Flex Builder and flash debuggers, edited my config files, and opened ports all over and still profiler doesn’t work… really annoying.
17. ::foogaz:: - October 25, 2008: respect ünd thnx!! ;]
18. Framed wall art - October 30, 2008: I am using Flex builder 3 and Fire fox 3. When I tried to debug in Flex builder, the Fire fog pops up, but it’s not connected to debugger, do I need to install some kind of dll for Fire fog?

Thank you for your help.
19. Disgruntled - November 12, 2008: I’m really confused because when I right-click “Debugger” is grayed out. Anything else I’ve found on this says that button isn’t even supposed to be available, but is simply there to let you know that you have the debugger version installed.

Ideas?
20. JohanM - November 20, 2008: Possibly your problem could be originating in the same issue that I’m writing about here: http://thoughts.novaleaf.com/johanm/2008/11/20/debug-output-trace-stopped-working-in-flex-builder-3/
The bug tickets at Adobe and Mozilla is still open on the subject and hopefully they will be resolved soon.
21. ChrisH - November 21, 2008: Thanks a lot for posting this – since upgrading to Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR 1.5, debugging stopped working, and others have had the same problems. Changing the IP address as per your description solved it!
22. Gratus - November 23, 2008: Thanks a lot for this post!!! I had the same problem one day at 1am – lucky for me after 30mins I found your post.
23. » Blog Archive » “Flex debugger not connecting?!” - November 30, 2008: [...] but thank God it’s a 2 second fix ( I took the risk to burrow the images from the other blog: my saviour [...]
24. Prashant Khanal - December 3, 2008: thanks dude…you saved my time i rather quickly googled my problem and voila!! i got to this page and problem solved.
25. Paul - January 5, 2009: WHOOO .. thanks for that .. i just spent half a day on this one, till i found this post .. the most annoying thing again, reinstalled fp 5 times, flex about 3 times .. was going nuts ! not a good start to the new year. Thanks once again.

Paul
26. Bob - January 5, 2009: Still having this problem after following previous suggestions. Any ideas?
27. jason - January 5, 2009: Debugger option is grayed out and not available so the fix doesn’t work.
28. Scott - January 15, 2009: Thanks for the solution. Debugger was broken from the minute Flex was installed on a new Vista box. Appreciate the insight.
29. Adam - January 18, 2009: Thanks!!! I’ve run into this issue dozens of times on a number of computers and never could figure out what to do. How stupid that 127.0.0.1 works but “localhost” does not.
30. RichClient - January 23, 2009: Worked like a charm! How does it feel to have eliminated major frustration?

Thank you!
31. Ehsan Baghaki - January 31, 2009: Thankx man!! I encountered the error and after just ONE search in google i found this and BOOM error fixed!! Thankx again
32. Shade - February 3, 2009: Hi, im using mac and doesnt work, any other solution for this problem?
33. Mateusz - February 10, 2009: Thanks! Now Flex Builder seems so much more useful
34. pallzoltan - February 11, 2009: thanks, very useful
35. Tyler Gillispie - February 13, 2009: Very nicely done! Solved my problem. I’ll never touch default settings again! –yeah right.
36. Tim Symons - February 26, 2009: Fix it for me too. This was driving me crazy since I was getting this error on XP at work but not on Vista at home!

Thanks for tracking this down.
37. Sid Maestre - February 27, 2009: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I’ve been struggling, ignoring, returning to struggle more with this issue.

Your solution fixed my problem. Mac OS X Leopard, Flash Debugger 9 and Flex Builder 3.2

Thank for your taking the time to post it.
38. matias - February 27, 2009: I thank you very much!!!

I had problems on Vista64, Flash Debugger 10 and Flex Builder 3.2
39. Windows 7 beta, Flex Builder and debugging. - Tom’s blog - March 8, 2009: [...] After a couple of attempts of changing UAC settings, looking up ports etc I found a solution here. Basically what you need to do is specify where your application is running. Right click on the [...]
40. Lane - March 10, 2009: billion thanks to you ..
I stuck almost 5 hours
41. junkoro - March 10, 2009: I am going to shout from Tokyo, Japan. Thank you very much! It just worked!!
42. iamconor - March 10, 2009: Thanks for posting! It worked for me too!

Woohoo!

Conor
43. iamconor - March 10, 2009: I found the cause in case anyone was interested. The localhost value in my hosts file had been corrupted somehow. I just had to set it back to 127.0.0.1 and it worked with the debugger set to localhost or set to 127.0.0.1
44. eme - March 17, 2009: Thanks! It works here too!
45. RaiulBaztepo - March 28, 2009: Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
46. mpj_33 - April 7, 2009: If the option for “debugger” is grayed-out, then double-check to make sure that you have uploaded the debug version of the Flex app, and not the release version.
47. Tim Rowe - April 9, 2009: The debug player I was using I couldn’t find a way to get that dialog up, and couldn’t get Eclipse to launch anything in a browser (only an Air app), so I’ve just spent half an hour trying to resolve the same problem, this was the solution for me:

in hosts (\drivers\etc) localhost was bound to the ipv6 address ::1
It seems Eclipse/Flash doesn’t recognize this, so I had to add an additional line for the IPv4 address, a line containing:
127.0.0.1 localhost

This fixed it straight away for me.
48. Alex - April 26, 2009: Champion! Thanks.
49. dennis callao - May 10, 2009: wow thanks! never thought my problem would be as simple as this..
now im back on track! thanks again!!
50. SteveS - May 30, 2009: I’m having the same problem and this doesn’t work me… because the Debugger menu item is grayed out in the context menu.
51. David Sackstein - June 9, 2009: Hmmm.
Thanks BUT
I wasted 2 hours on this problem and then I found your post.
After making the change, it worked “like a dream”.
Then it stopped working again “like a nightmare”.
So, there is no solution for this.
The community of Flex programmers is deemed to spend hours on the most basic of development functions – run the debugger.
And you write you hate Vista?
I admit I am a newbie outside of Microsoft, but its not a very encouraging entree into the world of Flash..
Does anyone have any more ideas?
Thanks
52. Pierre - June 27, 2009: I was having the same problem with launching an AIR APP in run and debug mode. I finally changed the application version in the
your app name-app.xml file to:
application xmlns=”http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/1.5.1″

and all runs well in version 10
53. tekkie - July 9, 2009: It’s all very weird and most likely related to the hosts configuration file.

But the thing related to it that I experienced with Flash Player Uninstall, is that it simply hung and didn’t uninstall a thing (on Mac).

With every possible player-deploying thing closed, the only evidence of this piece of software (or shall I say crap) were 2 lines from the console:

09.07.09 21:47:17 authexec[59427] executing /bin/sleep 09.07.09 21:52:24 authexec[59458] executing /bin/sleep
So pretty bad all this.
54. Milosz Olenski - July 15, 2009: Many thanks for Your post – it saved me today I alredy spent several hours trying to resolve this strange debugger problem, but I would definitely spend another few before I found it out myself. Thanks!
55. Sam - July 28, 2009: oh my gosh thanks. I was able to find this post within 15 minutes of my issue and you probably saved me hours.
56. Novian - September 2, 2009: Has anyone figured out a solution for getting the Debugger to connect via either Firefox or Safari on a Mac OS X 10.4.11? I’m using Flex Builder 3 and I cannot make a debugger connection for the life of me.

Thanks.
57. Mark Murphy - September 11, 2009: ALTERNATE SOLUTION!

If you selection “Other…” under the debug icon in Flex Builder 3 you can then add a “New Launch Configuration”.

-for “Project” Browse to the project you want to debug.
-Un-check “Use defaults” under “URL or path to launch”
-for “Debug” browse to the .swf file of the namespace you want to debug
58. z - September 15, 2009: the orignal problem may couse of wrong setting in the file that hold all the hosts list
(in xp – C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\host)

fix it may resolve the problem
59. Aaron Nance - September 22, 2009: Thanks for the solution. I should have thought of that on my own, but I didn’t so I’m very glad you did. I’ve had problems in the past with using “localhost” on Vista. They do everything IPV6 so localhost isn’t 127.0.0.1 anymore, despite the fact that most applications still think it is. Leave it to MS to make something this simple so complicated.
60. Pavan - September 29, 2009: Hai sir
The RiaFxZone site design is very good and attractive look and feel.
I like those styles, effects very much.
I am also a starting level flex developer.
ThankYou.
61. kirant400 - November 3, 2009: Thanks a lot..
62. jenue - November 3, 2009: Hi y’all,

I’m having issue while debugging flex app.
I have this error message “a connection to the debugger or profiler could not be established by adobe flash player 10″ when trying to debugger localhost. Is there any that i’m missing?
63. Tomas Sancio - November 7, 2009: I had the same problem with Mac OSX 10.5.8. Besides not being able to connect, my browsers would crash. So I uninstalled Flash Player using the uninstaller from Adobe http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html with all apps (especially Flex 3) closed, then installed Flash Player Debugger version 10 from here http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html and finally restarted my machine.

So far so good.
64. Kim - December 19, 2009: For those noticing that the right clicking shows a disabled Debugger option- I simply went into my Flex3 application and under Player/MAC I reinstalled the Flash Player. Everything works again.

(This was on a MAC – so PC persons might find their player elsewhere). Maybe this will help others.
65. senthil.srinivasan - January 2, 2010: thanks man great post keep it up !! hanks a lot …:)
66. Andy Hudson - January 15, 2010: I’ve been pulling my hair out on this problem for a few ours. Googled a lot, tried all types of solutions even uninstalling and reinstalling flex builder.

Your fix was spot on! A big thank you for this post as it’s saved my hair (what’s left!)
67. Joel - January 28, 2010: Thank you so much! Saved me alot of hours of “debugging” this problem
68. Bill Gray - February 23, 2010: I know this sucka is old, but it just saved my butt! Thanks for leaving it up!
69. Flash Builder 4 Debugger Can’t Connect? Now It Can! | RMC - April 28, 2010: [...] http://therush.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/resolved-flex-builder-3-debugger-stopped-working/ [...]
70. Iftekhar Ahmed - May 4, 2010: God bless you, it works.
71. grammar - June 10, 2010: Hey

I’ve had the same error for awhile now, but when I try to connect to Localhost it just does not connect. Same thing if I try “Other Machine…”

Any ideas where I can take it from here?
72. Robin - June 26, 2010: Ok, here’s a trick for Mac users who haven’t solved this problem yet (and are using Chrome). First of all check if your browser is actually using the debug version of flash player:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/155/tn_15507.html

In my case it wasn’t after repeated un/reinstalls. However, in Firefox it was working. The problem lied with Chrome in my case. To uninstall the preinstalled flash player on Chrome go to /Applications right-click on Google Chrome -> Show Package contents. Go to Contents/Versions. For each version go down one level and remove the flash player plugin. Launching your flex app in debug mode shows that you’re missing the plugin. Download the debug flash player from the adobe site and voila, it works again!!
73. Gertjan - August 14, 2010: On OSX; I fixed my version of the issue by explicitly associating .swf files with “Flash Player Debugger.app”.
74. Chris - September 6, 2010: RESOLVED! Thanks for that tip! I had a localhost entry in my host file that redirected localhost to some other adress (for developement). I forgot that that was still in there! *Bang head against wall*. Thanks a lot!
75. Timo - October 2, 2010: There is also another workaround for that: http://www.timo-ernst.net/2010/04/chrome-flash-debugger-not-connecting-to-flexflash-builder/
76. Andreas - October 4, 2010: Thank You!!!!! Spent 30 minutes trying to figure this one out.
77. Bob - October 18, 2010: THANK YOU!!!!!!
78. Pointer Men's Basketball - October 30, 2010: Best you should change the webpage title RESOLVED! Flex Builder 3 Debugger Stopped Working!! The World Wide Web According to … to more better for your blog post you create. I liked the the writing all the same.
79. lazer epilasyon fiyoti - February 1, 2011: I had a similar issue which I fixed by upgrading to the debug version of flash player 10
80. zinho - August 17, 2011: Thank you so much !
I try to install again and again flash debug and differents versions
i try on various web browser, ie, firefox, chrome
everything without success since two days…
and i came on your site !!
Alleluia, Mazeltov, Amdulillah !!
:=)
81. Greg W. - January 5, 2012: For what it’s worth, I too was experiencing the dreaded intermittent debugger fail using Flex 4 & IE. Would work fine three or four times in a row, then the next time the browser would come up with a blank screen and the debugger would not connect. The only way to fix the problem was to do a Clean… from the Project menu. At least on my machine, the problem was that occassionally when the system did it’s workspace build, it would automatically delete the swfobject.js file in our output (debug) directory. By just copying back a copy of that file, I found the application would run again just fine and no “Clean” was required. Had nothing to do with the version of IE, or the Flash Player (I was using the latest debuggable version the whole time). Still not sure why it randomly deletes the swfobject.js file — never used to do that.
82. Flex Builder stoped Debugging » free icons download - April 3, 2012: [...] Thanks in advance||| How about this: http://therush.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/resolved-flex-builder-3-debugg er-stopped-working/ [...]

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