Getting Ready for Windows Debugging
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
https://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/
· windbg
· cdb
· ntsd
· tlist
· gflags
· adplus
· UMDH
· symcheck
Sysinternals provides some great tools that we’ll be discussing
· 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
· Checksym
“Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools” is another great set of tools. In particular Kernrate is a part of that package
· Kernrate
Windows XP SP2 Support Tools
· 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)
DebugDiag
https://www.iis.net/handlers/895/ItemPermaLink.ashx
Userdump (User Mode Process Dumper)
Dheapmon (Desktop Heap Monitor)
Netmon 3.0
§ Go to https://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
https://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/debugstart.mspx
Boot Parameters to Enable Debugging
https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791527.aspx
How to Generate a Memory Dump File When a Server Stops Responding (Hangs)
https://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.