---
title: "How do I refactor legacy synchronous code to avoid deadlocks?"  
description: "How do I refactor legacy synchronous code to avoid deadlocks?"  
author: "Manish Sharma"  
published: 2026-09-21  
canonical: https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/117245/how-do-i-refactor-legacy-synchronous-code-to-avoid-deadlocks  
category: "Best Practices"  
tags: ["Refactoring", ".NET", "async"]  
reading_time: 1 minute  

---

# How do I refactor legacy synchronous code to avoid deadlocks?

## Legacy Code Pitfalls

Older .NET codebases often rely on blocking patterns: `Task.Wait()`, `.Result`, and `Task.Factory.StartNew` with synchronous continuations. Migrating these to pure async/await without understanding the synchronization context is a fast track to production outages.

### Refactoring Steps

- Replace `.Result` and `.Wait()` with `await` everywhere possible.
- Audit all entry points—web controllers, background services, and message handlers—for blocking calls.
- Introduce `ConfigureAwait(false)` in library layers to break context capture.
- Add unit tests that simulate high concurrency to surface hidden blocking behavior.

Start with the call graph. If a method is called from both sync and async paths, you may need to split it or introduce an async wrapper. Do not simply sprinkle `async` keywords on existing methods; that often leaves the blocking calls intact.


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Original Source: https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/117245/how-do-i-refactor-legacy-synchronous-code-to-avoid-deadlocks

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