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April 2004 - Posts

Data Breakpoints
Usually, people put breakpoints on an instruction. These breakpoints are set by replacing the first byte of an instruction with the ‘int 3’ instruction (0xcc). When the processor executes the ‘int 3’ instruction, it causes the Read More...
Attaching to a process without a dialog
In http://blogs.msdn.com/shaykatc/archive/2004/04/19/116222.aspx , Shaykat gave one alternative to the ntsd '-pn' option. I figured I would give two more. Alternative #1 - Attach project. Open the exe as a project (File->Open->Project, then select Read More...
Rant: Why do unsafe string functions still exist?
One thing that I fail to understand is why, in 2004, we still have code that uses strcat, strcpy, sprintf or any of the other string functions that don’t take a buffer size input. Microsoft, Open source, etc all still use these functions. Why? Can Read More...
Breakpoint exceptions from the heap
New programmers sometimes ask why the debugger stopped at a ‘user breakpoint’ exception in their program. The exception dialog will come up and say something like: Unhandled exception at 0x77f75a58 in CoruptHeap.exe: User breakpoint. The callstack Read More...
Diagnosing 'The debugger is not properly installed'
One of the error codes that we included in the VS.NET 2002 and 2003 debuggers is: The debugger is not properly installed. Run setup to install or repair the debugger. Diagnosing this is much harder then it should be (more on this later). For now lets Read More...
CoUnmarshalInterface and firewalls
One of the features I have recently worked on is improving our error messages around firewalls. I have a suggestion to anyone trying to use CoUnmarshalInterface to unmarshal an interface on a remote machine – don’t show the user the HRESULT Read More...
Back from India
In case anyone noticed, I haven’t blogged for a while. I also haven’t been answer questions in my comments. This is because I was on vacation in India. If you left a comment, it should now have an answer. Read More...
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