I finally gave up on a nasty web server problem that nobody seems to be able to solve and am using one of the four free support incidents that you get with MSDN Universal subscriptions. I have never done this before. But after trying a few people I know on the ASP.NET team, and a variety of newsgroups including the managed newsgroup for MSDN subscribers, it was suggested that I go this route.
I called on a holiday - Martin Luther King day in the afternoon (EST) so it was pretty reasonable that I needed to wait on hold for a little bit (only 11 minute). This support is available 24x7.
The first step is to get you in the system. The person I talked with first is the information gatherer. He did a very thorough job of getting the details and was pretty knowledgeable about the products.
Next step is to set up a support contract as I have never used it before. Though I'm entitled to 4 incidents, they don't bother setting this stuff up until you call in the first time. So he said "enjoy the music" while I get the rest of the due diligence done and find out how long it will be before I can get you hooked up with the person who is going to own your case and help you out.
All in all it was 1/2 hour before I was on the phone with a technician. When I first her Vignesh's Indian accent, I was a little worried that it was going to be a little more difficult because I was going to have to pay very close attention to understand him. But during our many hours on the phone, I think I only had to ask him to repeat something a few times - and sometimes that was because I was standing 8 feet away at my server and talking to him on the speaker phone. Vignesh lives in Bangalore where I know a bunch of .NET developers and there are a few user groups.
Even though I have access to search engines, newsgroups and some very smart developers, talking to someone who's focus is ASP.NET support is a huge advantage. Vignesh said that ASP.NET debugging (and especially remote debugging) is the topic that gives everyone the most grief because of the level of complexity and security involved in enabling this COM based functionality.
He had a LOT of things to try, sent me a few tools, had me run FileMon from SysInternals. After a few hours we finally made the original problem go away - that I was being told that I needed to be a member of Debugger Users in order to debug when I already was - and introduced a new problem. We both thought this was pretty good progress actually because we finally had had SOME effect on the problem.
It is amazing to have someone's complete attention when doing this. I couldn't ask this kind of help from any of my friends. More likely it would be some time on i.m. or back and forth in emails over a few days. But this was intense. And frankly, after I think 3 or 4 hours, even though we were having a great time, it was me who said "I need a break!".
He did send me a few more emails that evening with a suggestion and a few questions. But when I'm ready to keep going, I just have to send him an email and he will let me know his availability (he would most likely be working with another person at the moment) or I could choose to have my very detailed file passed on to another one of the support techs.
Fortunately, this problem, though taking a lot of my time, is not stopping anyone's business from running so I can afford to let it go for a day or two and get back to it.
More than finding the solution, we are both VERY curious as to what could have caused the problem. The only change that occurred on my server was a windows update. We agreed, however, that if it was the Windows Update, he would have gotten a lot of calls with this problem. The only change that occurred on my development machine was installing some Java software that manages my new HP LaserJet printer. I found that software to create problems with other software on my computer so I removed it and am happy to depend on the windows drivers for managing it.
So, being the cheapo that I am, after spending 20+ hours of my own time to solve this problem, if I had to pay for this help ($245 per incident) it is pretty well worth it. I know I'm saying this when the problem hasn't been solved yet, but I know that they will continue to help me until we get the problem solved and they have a lot more tricks up their sleeve than me. It is much more effective and satisfying than spending any more time googling (or msdn-ing) this problem.