Couple o' questions

WINDBG
1

WinDbg-ers,

I went to the WinDev conference and became interested in all the advantages
of debugging my driver under Win XP. I used to be a pretty hard-core
SoftIce person, but I’m not as enamored with it as I once was. One reason
is the talks at WinDev showed that WinDbg has some pretty impressive
features these days. Plus trying to keep up with SoftIce under XP is a
challenge. Then there is $$$.

But my issues:

I am running a serial link at 57600 baud between my Dell Inspiron 7500
laptop (PIII pretty fast) computer and my PIII 450 test system. I was
running 115200 for a while, but that proved to be unreliable. I am running
XP beta 2 (the one that most recently shipped with MSDN) free build. I have
not copied over the checked build HAL or anything like that.

  1. As I crash, burn and boot I find that sometimes the test system hangs
    during the boot process. This is usually after I nave had to hard-reset the
    test system. I get the “Starting Windows” message with the white bar across
    the bottom. If I reboot the test system again, WinDbg will not reconnect
    until after I reboot my laptop.

  2. Sometimes I recompile and my PDB file is not rewritten because it is in
    use by WinDbg. Is there a slick/reliable way to be sure I don’t get version
    skew because my old PDB file is in use the new one can’t be written? I tend
    to exit WinDbg when this happens, recopy the PDB file, then restart WinDbg.

  3. Every step in the program gives me the message, “WARNING: Stack unwind
    information not available. Following frames may be wrong.” Is this because
    I’m running the free build? I did feed it the symbols from the support
    disk.

So that I don’t appear too lazy, I did spend some time looking through the
WinDbg documentation, although I did not go through it on a
command-by-command basis trying to find commands that would help me with
this. In fact, I have not taken the time to actually analyze a bug check,
but that is documented, so I’ll try figuring it out from the docs before
whining here…

Thanks for any help!

-Evan

Evan Hillman
General Standards
435-755-0309

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2

Please send mail about windbg issue to xxxxx@microsoft.com It is a
direct link to the debugger team.

  1. Don’t know. The similar issues I’ve seen were all driver bugs that
    caused the system to hang and had nothing to do with the debugger.

  2. typing “.reload module” will cause the symbols for that module to be
    unloaded, thus enabling you to overwrite the PDB

  3. You get the “WARNING: Stack unwind…” message whenever you try to
    stack walk and symbols are missing for 1 or more modules on the stack.
    Once you hit a frame where symbols are missing the rest of the stack may
    not be correct. Use “!sym noisy” to help figure out symbol problems.

-----Original Message-----
From: Evan Hillman [mailto:xxxxx@home.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 7:06 PM
To: Kernel Debugging Interest List
Subject: [windbg] Couple o’ questions

WinDbg-ers,

I went to the WinDev conference and became interested in all the
advantages
of debugging my driver under Win XP. I used to be a pretty hard-core
SoftIce person, but I’m not as enamored with it as I once was. One
reason
is the talks at WinDev showed that WinDbg has some pretty impressive
features these days. Plus trying to keep up with SoftIce under XP is a
challenge. Then there is $$$.

But my issues:

I am running a serial link at 57600 baud between my Dell Inspiron 7500
laptop (PIII pretty fast) computer and my PIII 450 test system. I was
running 115200 for a while, but that proved to be unreliable. I am
running
XP beta 2 (the one that most recently shipped with MSDN) free build. I
have
not copied over the checked build HAL or anything like that.

  1. As I crash, burn and boot I find that sometimes the test system hangs
    during the boot process. This is usually after I nave had to hard-reset
    the
    test system. I get the “Starting Windows” message with the white bar
    across
    the bottom. If I reboot the test system again, WinDbg will not
    reconnect
    until after I reboot my laptop.

  2. Sometimes I recompile and my PDB file is not rewritten because it is
    in
    use by WinDbg. Is there a slick/reliable way to be sure I don’t get
    version
    skew because my old PDB file is in use the new one can’t be written? I
    tend
    to exit WinDbg when this happens, recopy the PDB file, then restart
    WinDbg.

  3. Every step in the program gives me the message, “WARNING: Stack
    unwind
    information not available. Following frames may be wrong.” Is this
    because
    I’m running the free build? I did feed it the symbols from the support
    disk.

So that I don’t appear too lazy, I did spend some time looking through
the
WinDbg documentation, although I did not go through it on a
command-by-command basis trying to find commands that would help me with
this. In fact, I have not taken the time to actually analyze a bug
check,
but that is documented, so I’ll try figuring it out from the docs before
whining here…

Thanks for any help!

-Evan

Evan Hillman
General Standards
435-755-0309

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3

Nathan and Evan …

I would recommend upgrading from Beta 2 to RC1, and make sure you’re running
WinDbg 3.00.0010, if you aren’t. Builds 2462 up to about 2475 had tons of
symbol problems that went away after 2475. Nathan and Andre, I’m sure, got
tired of my whining, complaining, and general nasty grams during that
period. :slight_smile:

Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Nathan Nesbit
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2001 9:34 AM
To: Kernel Debugging Interest List
Cc: Kernel Debugging Interest List; Windbg External Feedback
Subject: [windbg] RE: Couple o’ questions

Please send mail about windbg issue to xxxxx@microsoft.com It is a
direct link to the debugger team.

  1. Don’t know. The similar issues I’ve seen were all driver bugs that
    caused the system to hang and had nothing to do with the debugger.

  2. typing “.reload module” will cause the symbols for that module to be
    unloaded, thus enabling you to overwrite the PDB

  3. You get the “WARNING: Stack unwind…” message whenever you try to
    stack walk and symbols are missing for 1 or more modules on the stack.
    Once you hit a frame where symbols are missing the rest of the stack may
    not be correct. Use “!sym noisy” to help figure out symbol problems.

-----Original Message-----
From: Evan Hillman [mailto:xxxxx@home.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 7:06 PM
To: Kernel Debugging Interest List
Subject: [windbg] Couple o’ questions

WinDbg-ers,

I went to the WinDev conference and became interested in all the
advantages
of debugging my driver under Win XP. I used to be a pretty hard-core
SoftIce person, but I’m not as enamored with it as I once was. One
reason
is the talks at WinDev showed that WinDbg has some pretty impressive
features these days. Plus trying to keep up with SoftIce under XP is a
challenge. Then there is $$$.

But my issues:

I am running a serial link at 57600 baud between my Dell Inspiron 7500
laptop (PIII pretty fast) computer and my PIII 450 test system. I was
running 115200 for a while, but that proved to be unreliable. I am
running
XP beta 2 (the one that most recently shipped with MSDN) free build. I
have
not copied over the checked build HAL or anything like that.

  1. As I crash, burn and boot I find that sometimes the test system hangs
    during the boot process. This is usually after I nave had to hard-reset
    the
    test system. I get the “Starting Windows” message with the white bar
    across
    the bottom. If I reboot the test system again, WinDbg will not
    reconnect
    until after I reboot my laptop.

  2. Sometimes I recompile and my PDB file is not rewritten because it is
    in
    use by WinDbg. Is there a slick/reliable way to be sure I don’t get
    version
    skew because my old PDB file is in use the new one can’t be written? I
    tend
    to exit WinDbg when this happens, recopy the PDB file, then restart
    WinDbg.

  3. Every step in the program gives me the message, “WARNING: Stack
    unwind
    information not available. Following frames may be wrong.” Is this
    because
    I’m running the free build? I did feed it the symbols from the support
    disk.

So that I don’t appear too lazy, I did spend some time looking through
the
WinDbg documentation, although I did not go through it on a
command-by-command basis trying to find commands that would help me with
this. In fact, I have not taken the time to actually analyze a bug
check,
but that is documented, so I’ll try figuring it out from the docs before
whining here…

Thanks for any help!

-Evan

Evan Hillman
General Standards
435-755-0309

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