Debugger crashing! ARMDIDebugHandler .data on a 4 byte boundary?

I have been experiencing a strange issue where the debugging is crashing when I try to make the first step after the debugger launches.  The debugger pauses for a while, then seems to timeout and show “Debug Handler has not started” on the bottom of the CrossStudio window and stops debugging.

I am running a pretty simple application that just has a long “for” loop, turns an LED on, has another long “for” loop, turns the LED off and repeats.  I've tried the same thing on a more complicated project with the same result.  It crashes on the first line of code in the main function (stmfd sp!, {r11, lr}).  (The stack pointer seems to be setup correctly).  I can put a break point in the “reset_handler” function in the “AT91SAM9_Startup.s” file, and step fine as far as the main function. 

This only seems to happen when the .data section of the “ARM Debug/ARMDIDebugHandler.o” is not on a 4 byte boundary.  I have moved the .data section to be the last section in the memory map.  In the map file I see this:  

…

.data          0x70007ee0        0x2 ARM Debug/ATestFile.o

                0x70007ee0                testShort1

 .data          0x70007ee2       0xc8 ARM Debug/ARMDIDebugHandler.o

 .data          0x70007faa        0x0 ARM Debug/BTestFile.o

 …

 If I remove my test variable from before the ARMDIDebugHandler so that it’s now on a 4 byte boundary, and add a variable after the ARMDIDebugHandler (so that everything to follow is unaffected), the code runs fine! 

…

.data          0x70007ee0        0x0 ARM Debug/ATestFile.o

 .data          0x70007ee0       0xc8 ARM Debug/ARMDIDebugHandler.o

 .data          0x70007fa8        0x2 ARM Debug/BTestFile.o

                0x70007fa8                testshort2

…

 Has anyone else experienced something similar to this, or understand why this is happening?  Am I on the right track with the “ARMDIDebugHandler.o” data alignment, or am I just chasing shadows?  Does anyone know of an easy way to enforce that the data variables from this file start on a 4 byte boundary?