Debugging locally

NTDEV
1

After reading through the documentation on debugging I am moving ahead to set up a host/target configuration, but I am still waiting on some parts. Am I right in assuming that with a kernel debugger any bug checks on my target machine will cause the debugger to break into the driver instead of going to blue screen?

Is there any way to achieve something similar using a local debugging configuration?

Thanks,
BJW

2

BJW:

  1. With a few pathelogical exceptions (such as if you are messing with
    interrupt handlers with a bug check occurs) that probably aren’t worth
    worrying about at this point, yes as to will it break into the kernel
    debugger or not. It will not, necessarily but somewhere in your driver,
    depending on when the error is actually noticed and the the bug check is
    thrown.

  2. For all practical purposes, not with WinDbg. There is something
    called local kernel debugging, but it is very limited in what it can do
    (basically it can’t do anything that would require halting the machine;
    i. e. - breakpoints, et. c.). All it is really good for is examining
    (and modifying memory to some extent) (not even registers).

When SoftICE was still a product, it could do the vast majority of
kernel debugging on one machine; pretty much everything except the
initialization routines of boot drivers (if you happen to have been the
sort of masochist who used SI for GUI debugging, then this also was not
really possible/useful). Alas, as of something like a few months ago,
SoftICE is no more, but overall WinDbg is much better.

mm

>> xxxxx@nchsoftware.com 2006-10-16 23:46 >>>
After reading through the documentation on debugging I am moving ahead
to set up a host/target configuration, but I am still waiting on some
parts. Am I right in assuming that with a kernel debugger any bug checks
on my target machine will cause the debugger to break into the driver
instead of going to blue screen?

Is there any way to achieve something similar using a local debugging
configuration?

Thanks,
BJW

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

3

Thanks for that. It’s a tough area to be a newbie in.

4

If you are not writing hardware drivers you can debug locally by running
your driver in a virtual machine guest os and debug it through windbg.
It is a bit slow but otherwise works just fine.

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of
xxxxx@nchsoftware.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:46 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Debugging locally

Thanks for that. It’s a tough area to be a newbie in.

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer