Getting Ready for Windows Debugging

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ntdebug

15 Dec 2006 2:29 PM

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Welcome to the Microsoft NTDebugging blog! I’m Matthew Justice, an Escalation Engineer on Microsoft’s Platforms Critical Problem Resolution (CPR) team. Our team will be blogging about troubleshooting Windows problems at a low level, often by using the Debugging Tools for Windows. For more information about us and this blog, check out the about page.

To get things started I want to provide you with a list of tools that we’ll be referencing in our upcoming blog posts, as well as links to some technical documents to help you get things configured.

The big list of tools:

The following tools are part of the “Debugging Tools for Windows” – you’ll definitely need these

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/

· windbg

· cdb

· ntsd

· tlist

· gflags

· adplus

· UMDH

· symcheck

Sysinternals provides some great tools that we’ll be discussing

http://www.sysinternals.com

· Process Explorer

· Process Monitor

· Regmon

· Filemon

· DbgView

· Handle.exe

· Tcpview

· LiveKD

· AutoRuns

· WinObj

There are many tools contained in “MPS Reports” (MPSRPT_SETUPPerf.EXE), but I’m listing it here specifically for Checksym

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=CEBF3C7C-7CA5-408F-88B7-F9C79B7306C0&displaylang=en

· Checksym

“Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools” is another great set of tools. In particular Kernrate is a part of that package

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&familyid=9D467A69-57FF-4AE7-96EE-B18C4790CFFD

· Kernrate

Windows XP SP2 Support Tools

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=49AE8576-9BB9-4126-9761-BA8011FABF38&displaylang=en

· netcap

· poolmon

· memsnap

· tracefmt (64-bit versions available in the DDK)

· tracelog

· tracepdb

· depends

· pstat

“Visual Studio “ – in addition to the compilers and IDE, the following tools come in handy:

· SPY++

· dumpbin

Perfwiz (Performance Monitor Wizard)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=31fccd98-c3a1-4644-9622-faa046d69214&DisplayLang=en

DebugDiag

http://www.iis.net/handlers/895/ItemPermaLink.ashx

Userdump (User Mode Process Dumper)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E089CA41-6A87-40C8-BF69-28AC08570B7E&displaylang=en

Dheapmon (Desktop Heap Monitor)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5CFC9B74-97AA-4510-B4B9-B2DC98C8ED8B&displaylang=en

Netmon 3.0

§ Go to http://connect.microsoft.com/

§ Sign in with your passport account

§ Choose "Available Connections" on the left

§ Choose "Apply for Network Monitor 3.0” (once you've finished with the application, the selection appears in your "My Participation" page)

§ Go to the Downloads page (On the left side), and select the appropriate build 32 or 64 bit build.

Some articles you may find useful:

Debugging Tools and Symbols: Getting Started

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/debugstart.mspx

Boot Parameters to Enable Debugging

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791527.aspx

How to Generate a Memory Dump File When a Server Stops Responding (Hangs)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303021/

After installing the “Debugging Tools for Windows”, you’ll find two documents at the root of the install folder that are helpful:

· kernel_debugging_tutorial.doc - A guide to help you get started using the kernel debugger.

· debugger.chm - The help file for the debuggers. It details the commands you can use in the debugger. Think of this as a reference manual, rather than a tutorial.