How to debug "This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way." when I can't even step in the code?

I have a C++ program that is giving this error as soon as the process starts - apparently before any user code executes. It only happens when inlining is enabled. Even with debug symbols built in, I can't step in the code. As soon as I press F10 in Visual Studio I get the error and the program stops. I checked all exceptions/checks in "Debug/Exceptions" but still don't get a break.

Normally I would expect something like this to be due to a missing runtime dependency but I'm quite positive that's not the case here (verified with Dependency Walker).

edit: I used Steve Townsend's recommendation of CDB and now I'm able to step through the pre-user-code parts of the program. The final stack trace is:

Child-SP          RetAddr           Call Site
00000000`0008e308 00000000`7541601a ntdll!ZwTerminateProcess+0xa
00000000`0008e310 00000000`7540cf87 wow64!Wow64EmulateAtlThunk+0x86ba
00000000`0008e340 00000000`7539276d wow64!Wow64SystemServiceEx+0xd7
00000000`0008ec00 00000000`7540d07e wow64cpu!TurboDispatchJumpAddressEnd+0x24
00000000`0008ecc0 00000000`7540c549 wow64!Wow64SystemServiceEx+0x1ce
00000000`0008ed10 00000000`7776ae27 wow64!Wow64LdrpInitialize+0x开发者_如何学C429
00000000`0008f260 00000000`777672f8 ntdll!LdrGetKnownDllSectionHandle+0x1a7
00000000`0008f760 00000000`77752ace ntdll!RtlInitCodePageTable+0xe8
00000000`0008f7d0 00000000`00000000 ntdll!LdrInitializeThunk+0xe

You could try setting up Process Dumper and configure it for your EXE to create a dump on any process exit. Then start the process from the command line to rule out any artifacts of the IDE.

This ought to give you a dump for post-mortem debugging, and maybe a callstack fromm the exiting thread that could be useful.

It probably has to do with the order that your globals are being initialized. In C++, the order between modules is unspecified. So if a global's initializer depends on a global in another module already being initialized, you're in trouble.

It's possible to put a break point in the CRT initialization code that runs before calling main (or wmain, or WinMain, or whatever you're using). You can step through that code and see what's causing the problem.

Another possible cause is a DllMain function is returning an error or throwing an exception during DLL_PROCESS_ATTACH.