Sign In
A Hole In My Head
Doron Holan's musings on drivers and other nibbles and bits
Translate This Page
Translate this page
Powered by
Microsoft® Translator
Options
About
Email Blog Author
RSS for posts
Atom
RSS for comments
OK
Search
Advanced search options...
Search In:
Everything
Blogs
Forums
People
Groups
Places
Pages
Date range:
All Time
Last Year
Last 6 Months
Last 3 Months
Last Month
Last Week
Last Two Days
Tags
Coding Thoughts
Design Patterns
KMDF
WDF
WDK Docs
WDM
WinDBG/KD Fun
Archive
Archives
December 2010
(1)
August 2010
(1)
May 2010
(3)
February 2010
(2)
March 2009
(2)
February 2009
(1)
January 2009
(2)
June 2008
(1)
April 2008
(4)
March 2008
(6)
December 2007
(1)
November 2007
(2)
October 2007
(8)
July 2007
(2)
June 2007
(4)
May 2007
(3)
April 2007
(5)
March 2007
(6)
February 2007
(6)
January 2007
(7)
December 2006
(6)
November 2006
(11)
October 2006
(9)
September 2006
(8)
August 2006
(17)
July 2006
(15)
June 2006
(9)
May 2006
(16)
March 2006
(20)
February 2006
(17)
WinDBG/KD Fun
MSDN Blogs
>
A Hole In My Head
>
WinDBG/KD Fun
Posts
Subscribe via RSS
Sort by:
Most Recent
|
Most Views
|
Most Comments
Excerpt View
|
Full Post View
A Hole In My Head
MSDN link on how to set up a user or kernel debugger
Posted
over 3 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
0
Comments
This has got to be one of the top FAQs out there: how do I set up a kernel debugger? I just stumbled across a link on MSDN which gives instructions not only on how to set up a kernel debugger on all transports (serial, 1394, usb2), but also how to set...
A Hole In My Head
Debugger commands (.step_filter) that make my life easier
Posted
over 4 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
0
Comments
This is a pretty cool and somewhat obscure debugger command. It allows you to tell the debugger what functions to skip if you are using the trace command ('t'). I think of the trace command as the 'step into' command though, but that is just...
A Hole In My Head
Getting 64 bit Vista to open my Inbox the way I want it to
Posted
over 4 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
1
Comments
A bit over a year ago I had to figure out why my Mail key started behaving differently on Vista vs XP and wrote about how I fixed it. Well, my dev box was so slow that I was able to employ enough sympathy that I got a new one. While my old...
A Hole In My Head
A must have book for any Windows developer
Posted
over 5 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
4
Comments
I saw a book, Advanced Windows Debugging , in the Microsoft company store and quickly read through it. It looked pretty awesome in the level of detail and breadth that it covered. I ordered my own copy and I think it would be an invaluable resource for...
A Hole In My Head
Changes to !poreqlist
Posted
over 5 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
0
Comments
I posted about !poaction and !poreqlist about a year ago. I tend to use these extensions whenever I am debugging a power related issue in the framework. A few months ago, I ran !poreqlist and got the following output 0: kd> !poreqlist All active Power...
A Hole In My Head
Debugger command (!list) that makes my life easier
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
7
Comments
Yesterday I introduced the dl command and demonstrated some of its limitations. Today I will talk about !list . Let's take yesterday's data structure, MY_DATA. What if the LIST_ENTRY is at the end of the structure or there is more data in your structure...
A Hole In My Head
Debugger command (dl) that makes my life easier
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
2
Comments
The use of the LIST_ENTRY structure in WDM is quite pervasive. It is used for nearly all list keeping tasks. I have used it extensively in the past and KMDF uses it quite a bit as well. There are two debugger commands that help in viewing the contents...
A Hole In My Head
Viewing your KMDF log in a mini-dump (and other post mortem features)
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
0
Comments
Your KMDF driver log can also be available in a mini-dump under certain circumstances. If you have a full kernel dump or a full memory dump, the log will be always present (barring any memory corruption or problems writing out the dump file). KMDF...
A Hole In My Head
Customizing the KMDF log for your driver
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
0
Comments
Yesterday I talked about the KMDF log. The KMDF log is a great tool to debug why a DDI call has failed or diagnose the cause of a bugcheck in your driver. You can customize different attributes of the log so that you can better debug your driver....
A Hole In My Head
How can I view the KMDF log for my driver?
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
1
Comments
A lot of developers have a great experience with KMDF, but then they sometimes hit a wall. They add a chunk of code and the drivers start failing because something in the new code was not implemented correctly. The first question that comes to mind is...
A Hole In My Head
Debugger commands (stack frame navigation) that makes my life easier
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
9
Comments
One thing that I have always found clunky is stack frame navigation in windbg/kd. Previously, I thought you had only a couple of options. The first option, if you are using WinDBG, is that you can bring up the call stack window. I have found that...
A Hole In My Head
New debugger package is now public
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
2
Comments
You can download the package from WHDC . It is hard for me to keep track of when they go public, we get internal drops more often and so it is hard for me to know when fixes see the (external) light of day. Enjoy.
A Hole In My Head
Debugger commands (!error, .enable_long_status) that makes my life easier
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
5
Comments
One thing you learn very quickly when writing a driver is that NTSTATUS is used almost everywhere . The consistency is nice, especially compared to user mode where errors can be an HRESULT , LONG , or DWORD (yes they are all the same underlying type,...
A Hole In My Head
Why does my COM port disappear when I enable the kernel debugger?
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
1
Comments
A lot of folks are told to connect a kernel debugger (over a serial calbe) to their systems if it is constantly blue screening or if there are suspected issues in the kernel or a loaded driver. Most of these folks do not have the skills to debug the...
A Hole In My Head
Previous command completion in WinDBG
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
3
Comments
One of the features I like about kd is that since you are using a console window, you get a lot of the console functionality for free. The 2 features that I really like are tab (err, F8) completion and the listing of command history (F7). On the other...
A Hole In My Head
Yet another verifier? Yeah, KMDF has one too!
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
1
Comments
One of the prominant design goals throughout KMDF's development cycle was to create a system that had a built in and deeply integrated verifier from the start. Furthermore, we had a goal to create a system that was easier to verify (as compared to...
A Hole In My Head
How to break in at the call site that invokes the break point
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
8
Comments
I think everyone at some point in time wants to embed a break point in there code, whether it be for debugging purposes, path tracing, or detecting edge conditions that have not yet been tested. When I hit a break point, I would prefer that the debugger...
A Hole In My Head
Debugger commands (gu) that make my life easier
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
3
Comments
It's a quick one today. One of the great features about windbg is that it has a return to caller button . I tend to like to keep my hands on the keyboard even when I am using windbg and Shift+F11 is still too cumbersome (long live the home row!). In the...
A Hole In My Head
Debugger commands (!bpid) that make my life easier (part 6)
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
2
Comments
Today's kernel debugger command is "!bpid", break on process id. This command will break into an application in the application context from within the kernel debugger. Why would you want to do this? Well, you are not always in the right user mode...
A Hole In My Head
Debugger commands (dps, dpp) that make my life easier (part 5)
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
3
Comments
Today's debugger command is "dps" (display pointers and symbols). You might be familiar with the "dds" command. While dds will always dump a DWORD, dps will dump pointers, where the pointer size is determined by the target. (I used to use dds because...
A Hole In My Head
Avoiding #defines for constant data and using enums instead
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
27
Comments
I think that the C preprocessor is a very powerful tool, but I like to limit my use of #defines. I have already touched on this when i talked about why I liked FORCEINLINE and I want to talk about it some more. I realize I can't eliminate the use of #defines...
A Hole In My Head
Debugger commands (!sd) that make my life easier (part 3.1)
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
2
Comments
Peter Wieland informed me that you can actually find the security descriptor (SD) using !object, you just have to work harder to get at it. It relies on an undocumented structure, but since this is not being used at runtime and !object also uses it, I...
A Hole In My Head
Debugger commands (dt, ??) that make my life easier (part 4)
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
4
Comments
Today I will cover how to look at type information from the command line of windbg/kd. You can do all of this in the UI with a mouse, but that takes too long ;). I like to keep my hands on the keyboard and not move around. More importantly, by learning...
A Hole In My Head
Debugger commands (!object) that make my life easier (part 3)
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
0
Comments
Today I am going to write about !object. One of the tools you can get from sysinternals is WinObj.exe. This allows you to traverse the internal object hierarchy in Windows. It's a neat tool, but it uses internal undocumented APIs which means that when...
A Hole In My Head
Real life usage of loading a driver as a dump file
Posted
over 6 years ago
by
Doron Holan [MSFT]
5
Comments
Today I got a callstack via email (from the NTDEV list), but no dump file. I needed to determine if the bugcheck was due to a KMDF or a USB core bug. Since I had no dump file, I had to work purely on what the message contained. The callstack did have...
Page 1 of 2 (29 items)
1
2