So as you may know, Microsoft and many SharePoint dev houses swear by doing development on Virtual PCs/Virtual Servers. The reason for this boils down to the fact that when you are debugging a SharePoint Web Part with Visual Studio 2003, you have to connect to the active w3wp.exe process that IIS is using and have your debugger work with that. This single-threads that process and halts/pauses it as you explore the reflected data structure states/etc.

I.e. SharePoint development doesn’t share well. I.e. Two developers trying to share the same server, while one is debugging, is ugly and crass and doesn’t belong in Kindergarten.

So the fix is to give each developer her/his own VPC to do with as he/she likes.

Anyhow, if you are doing this via Microsoft VPC 2004 SP1 (free for download these days, by the way), and you happen to be using it on a laptop/notebook, you need a hotfix (Microsoft KB 889677). If you happen to be using a laptop/notebook that’s using Intel’s 915 Chipset (i.e. some forms of Centrino chipsets), you need an additional hotfix (Microsoft KB 899525). I hear that Tablet PC owners may need a different one.

Add to this pain that you have to either find some place to download the patches that’s illicit or ask Microsoft support for the patches (i.e. risk some idiot deciding to charge you for it). I managed to find a non-Microsoft source for the hotfixes, but if you do the same, do what you can to be paranoid and cautious about the hotfixes you didn’t get from Microsoft – the reason it’s a good idea to get it from Microsoft directly is that you’re reasonably sure someone isn’t slipping you a trojan horse or something worse instead of the actual patch.

Anyhow, after installing the additional patches, VPC is flying compared to previously.