WinDbg getting started tutorial

From: gray fox s Blog

Introduction

In my career, I saw that most of us useVisual StudioInstead of using many other free debuggers. You may have many reasons to use such a debugger. For example, you do not have a development environment installed on your home machine, but a program crashes again and again. In fact, according to the stack'sDumpYou can determineIEIs the crash caused by a third-party plug-in.

ForWinDbgSo far, I have not found a good quick start tutorial. This article discusses with examplesWinDbg. First, let's assume that you are familiar with the Basic Debugging concepts:Stepping in, stepping out,The basic concepts of breakpoint and remote debugging.

Note: This is a getting started document. You can read and start using it.WinDbg.If you have any questions about specific commands, referWinDbg. You can use the commands mentioned in this article in any debugger provided by Microsoft, suchVSIn the command line window.

This article is based onWinDbg 6.3.

This is only the first article in a series of articles about debugging technology. In the next article, I will explain how to write extensions for the debuggerDLL.

Debugger Overview

The following describes the debugger you can download from the Microsoft Website:

·KD-The kernel debugger. You can use it to debug system problems such as blue screens. It is indispensable to develop a device driver.

·CDB-Command Line debugger. This is a command line program

·NTSD-NTDebugger. This is a user-mode debugger that can be used to debug user-mode applications. It is actuallyCDBOfWindows UIEnhanced.

·WinDbg-Use a prettyUIPackedKDAndNTSD.WinDbgYou can debug the kernel mode or user-mode programs.

·VS, VS.net-Use the sameKDAndNTSDThe same debugging engine andWinDbgProvides a more functional interface.

Comparison between debuggers

Function	KD	NTSD	WinDbg	Visual Studio. NET
Kernel mode debugging	Y	N	Y	N
User mode debugging		Y	Y