This article was just updated to include an internal Microsoft tool that is now public. There are many free tools used to troubleshoot and debug software. Below I present a list of the tools that my peers and I use most of the time. Though most of the tools below are free Microsoft tools, not all...

1- For reactive incidents: “Bring the engineer onsite because it is going to be easier to isolate the problem.” This is the most common misconception I’ve heard. Let me explain: most complex problems require deep debugging sessions. Collecting the necessary information is the easy...

Problem Description: Applications that use a great deal of TCP network activity may use all of the possible port numbers -- especially if they are very “chatty”. By default, when an application closes a TCP connection, the port number used cannot be reused for the same IP address for another...

Whenever I’m debugging with customers watching it’s inevitable: they always ask me what this PSSCOR2.dll extension is. The next question is always if PSSCOR2.DLL is going to be public. PSSCOR2.DLL is a superset of SOS.DLL and has much more commands and variations! The good news is that yes, now PSSCOR2...

Using WinDbg you can create a dump file from an application running, for instance, in a production server. After collecting the dump file, you can load it in another machine and debug it. However, to be more effective during your debugging session you need symbols . Thus, thinking about it, here's the...

Let me share with you some public tools I’ve been using when working with applications and SharePoint cases. These are the tools I use before trying a hardcore approach like attaching the debugger to the application or collecting dumps to do a post-mortem debugging. Of course, there’re situations...