If You Use BackgroundWorker in .Net, Make Sure You Wrap Your Worker Method In Try (or risk missing the exception thrown)

So, just a short post in case someone runs into the same problem I had today that cost me about 2 hours using Visual Studio 2010.  Basically, if you are using the BackgroundWorker in a windows app (with visual studio) and find that the method is not finishing and seemingly not throwing exceptions, maybe it actually is and you are missing it.

That is, if you have code like this:

private void backgroundWorker1_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
    backgroundWorker1.ReportProgress(0,"starting...");
    for (int i = 0; i < 10;i++ )
    {
        if (i > 5)
        {
            throw new ApplicationException("any error here");
        }
        backgroundWorker1.ReportProgress(i, "working...");
    }
}

and you run it in the debugger, it will not stop by default when the exception is thrown (like it would in single threaded code).

So, I recommend doing the following and setting a break point to see the error.

Another thing you can do is bump up where debug’s stops uisng the dialog:

goes to:

Then, you will get an error you expect.

HTH’s!