A few days ago I bitched about a problem with my computer and certain applications locking up on me for minutes on end. Well, I finally found the culprit.

Turns out, something is screwy with mdm.exe. Every application that hung. when launched, the Microsoft Debug Manager kicked in. If I killed the mdm.exe, within a few seconds the sticky application became responsive. So I went into C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VS7Debug and renamed mdm.exe.

Now everything zings!

I’ve not determined exactly what the problem is, but I’ve got a tourniquet in place and the bleeding has stopped. When I get home tomorrow after work, I’ll have a better chance to see exactly why this did what it did. Which is good because for some @!#% reason, none of my system restore points worked.