R.I.P. SoftICE

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

Art Cube — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 20:18:45 GMT

Any chance we could see this open sourced?

I still have softice running all the time.

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

Russ Osterlund — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 21:12:36 GMT

It feels like the untimely death of an old friend.

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

JoeR — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 23:24:39 GMT

I e-mailed the product manager and let him know you were displeased...

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

mikeb — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 01:19:08 GMT

I used SoftICE starting way beck when it was first released for DOS (at the not coincidental price of $386).

Great stuff!

Had to stop using it when Compuware started pricing it waaay higher.

Now that MS has re-kindled developement of kd/windbg (starting about 3 years ago?) there's much less need for SoftICE.

I'd take another look at it if it had a nicer price - maybe Compuware can get some other company to pick it up (but it would be hard to compete against Windows Debugging Tools price of $0).

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Sat, 08 Apr 2006 12:15:16 GMT

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re: R.I.P. SoftICE

Sameer Jha — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 00:01:28 GMT

This is terrible news. Why did Compuware had to do this?????
It's really sad to know that SofICE(one of the greatest piece of software ever written, IMHO) will be no longer enhanced further.

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

Louis — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 05:05:29 GMT

I wonder what will take over it's role as the ultimate debugger

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

Norman Diamond — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 06:00:35 GMT

Can someone else catch it before it crashes completely...

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

Adrian — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:41:12 GMT

Speaking of dead and retired software, what happened to the performance profiler in Visual Studio? Looks like even the "Pro" SKU of VS 2005 doesn't come with one.

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

Matt Pietrek — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 18:42:08 GMT

The Visual Studio profiler is part of the Team System SKUs: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/teamsystem/reference/technotes/profiling_windows_apps/vsts_profiler.aspx

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

John Scatter — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 15:47:12 GMT

I really believe it's a terrible mistake. There is no other product that can match the features and ease of use of softice.

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

Phar Lap — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 23:46:01 GMT

Why the hell would you retire a unique(!) product? WinDbg is a joke - no, the mother of all jokes - compared to SoftICE... in fact, every debugger I saw till today is a joke compared to SI. SI is incredible and I will not just miss it, I'm really sad about this decision!

I surely found a few bugs when I started using all of its power, nasty bugs, they upset me at that time... but once you know them you can work around somehow. As a whole, SoftICE is still the BEST kernel and user-mode debugger even after considering the fact that the system "freezes" when the UI is active.

SoftICE is the main reason for the success I had in my profession, I also remember how it helped me the first time with a problem in Windows 95 not playing some system sounds and MIDI not initializing. I tracked it down to a failing LoadModule call that tried to load mmtask.tsk but the file has been deleted somehow.
It was around that time when I played Half-Life and someone on the server used the "client-crash exploit" and caused SoftICE to literally pop into my face showing me the fault so I was able to very quickly figure that a simple NOP patch would make the exploit useless. My client-crash protector was born and became a success at that time.

The list goes on and on and I don't want to believe that such a vital tool is discontinued?!

Are there any *special* reasons for this decision. Could you tell us, Matt? What would make your team continue at least SoftICE?

Regards,
- Phar Lap -

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

John Locke — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 07:14:07 GMT

The government told Compuware to 'retire' all low-level tools. Microsoft will offer the only low-level tools for Windows and these tools will require owner registration and have been rewritten so that various tiers of low-level functionality are only available via DRM and "Genuine Low-Level Debugger Owner" checks. And of course the entire thing will be filled with Microsoft phone-homes.

It's called 'the freedom to trust your government'.

Cheerio,
J. Locke
--
"The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it. "

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

Barry Tannenbaum — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 00:54:28 GMT

<i>Are there any *special* reasons for this decision. Could you tell us, Matt? What would make your team continue at least SoftICE?</i>

Why was SoftICE discontinued? Simple ROI. The decision was made that the investment in resources would return more profits if spent on other products.

Could SoftICE have survived with better (any!) marketing and advertising? Perhaps. But it's hard to compete with free. WinDBG may not do everything that SoftICE does, but for many developers it's sufficient. And Visual Studio's native debugger is sufficient for most ring-3 tasks.

- Barry

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

Adrien de Croy — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 01:30:03 GMT

This is very sad and disturbing news.

We don't just love SI, and everything it has allowed us to do. We DEPEND on it.

WinDbg is not a suitable debugger for kernel drivers. We have several products whose development and maintenance relies on SI. So we will have to find an alternative, but it will cost us and our users. Ease of use and ease of debugging results in more effective debugging and therefore more stable code. Losing SI will create a lot of work for us, and we just hope it doesn't result in more bugs.

I for one would pay more for SI - it's indispensible.

If they will discontinue it, can't they at least sell it to someone? Even MS?

Adrien

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

Jonathan Wilson — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 11:58:02 GMT

I think part of the problem Compuware and NuMega had is that so many people were/are pirating it.
I do concur with all the people who say that SoftIce is unmatched. There are things SoftIce can do (especially if you use the 3rd party IceExt extention and other such things) that pretty much no other debugger can do.

re: R.I.P. SoftICE

RobL — Fri, 05 May 2006 19:00:04 GMT

I'm in the early stages of a new hardware project, and was evaluating DriverStudio. After this announcement I started looking for another solution, and came up with something that you may find interesting.

It is a driver development tookit called WinDriver, apparently it's been around for a while. It seems solid enough and I'd like to here your thought about it. The relevant link is http://www.jungo.com/windriver.html.

R.I.P. NuMega Lab

Under The Hood - Matt Pietrek — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:31:12 GMT

In a previous post , I lamented the loss of SoftIce. Now, we truly are at the end of an era. Compuware

MSDN Blog Postings · R.I.P. NuMega Lab

MSDN Blog Postings · R.I.P. NuMega Lab — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:37:31 GMT

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它山之石，可以攻玉

AdvDbg System Section — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:48:32 GMT

泰克（http://www.tek.com/）是全球著名的测试测量仪器生产厂商，它的最著名产品是示波器。从调试的角度来看，示波器对于硬件工程师来说就好像是软件工程师使用的调试器。在硬件领域，已经形成了一个不算太小的产业来专门生产以示波器、逻辑分析仪为代表的测试和调试设备，人们愿意以高昂的价格来购买这些设备，厂商们也不断的加大投入来研发更好、更先进、价格也更昂贵的设备。...

[In a]-R.I.P. NuMega Lab « lot of news Weblog

[In a]-R.I.P. NuMega Lab « lot of news Weblog — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 05:09:22 GMT

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soft ice for windows 1 5

soft ice for windows 1 5 — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:00:18 GMT

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Under The Hood Matt Pietrek R I P SoftICE | Paid Surveys

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Under The Hood Matt Pietrek R I P SoftICE | work from home

Under The Hood Matt Pietrek R I P SoftICE | work from home — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:40:07 GMT

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