Remark summary WinDbg 32-bit version and 64-bit version selection

The brothers who used to Vsiual studio might think that all debuggers should be like it for a preconceived reason, but when you install Debugging Tools for Windows, you will find two series of tools A range of 32-bit tools and a range of 64-bit tools. This is confusing because you don't have to think about 32-bit or 64-bit at all when we install Microsoft Visual Studio.

If you are using one of the WINDBG debug toolset (WINDBG, KD, CDB, or NTSD), you have to make your own choices. To choose the right debugging tool, you need to know the following two points:

1. The processor type of your debug host.

2. Your debug host is running a 32-bit version of Windows or a 64-bit version.

PS: The computer that runs the debugger we become the debug host, the computer that is debugged we call the target machine.

Debug Host runs a 32-bit version of Windows

If your debug host is running a 32-bit version of Windows, use a 32-bit debug tool (whether the target machine being debugged at this time is x86-based or x64-based).

X64-based Debug host running 64-bit Windows if your debug host is using X64-based's processor and running 64-bit Windows, refer to the following rules:

• If you are analyzing a dump file, you can use the 32-bit or 64-bit debug toolset. (Whether the dump file is user-state or kernel-state, or whether the dump file is caught on a x86-based or x64-based platform.) ）

• If you are doing real-time kernel debugging, you can use either the 32-bit or 64-bit debug toolset (whether the target machine being debugged at this point is x86-based or x64-based)

• If you are doing real-time user-state debugging, and the debugger is on the same machine, you need a 64-bit debug toolset for both 64-bit code and 32-bit WOW64 code. Use the. Effmach command to set the debugger's mode.

• If you are debugging 32-bit user-state code in real-time, but the code runs on a separate target machine, use the 32-bit debug toolset.

• Summarize

  Only in the case of real-time user-state debugging, and the debugger is also on the same 64-bit machine, the 64-bit debug toolset must be used!

Remark summary WinDbg 32-bit version and 64-bit version selection