.net - Cannot attach debugger to w3wp

Question

I'm debugging an ASP.NET application but sometimes cannot find w3wp neither in Visual Studio process list (Menu: Debug -> Attach to Process...) nor in task manager. I have selected 'Show processes from all users' and 'Show processes in all sessions' check boxes. When run the project from localhost, after an unhanded exception happens debugger would attach to w3wp (too late for me to step into code) !

Why I cannot see w3wp sometimes ?

Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition 64-bit, Visual Studio 2010

Answer 1

When you reset IIS or IIS is not running, you need to make a call to the server, when you hit the server for the first time the w3wp process starts.