RE: [winDbg] WinDbg speed?

WINDBG
1

Hi,
I was a happy SoftICE user until XP was released and then I started using
WinDbg because of the poor WinXP support in SoftICE. Firstly you can run
the com link at 115200 but it is still slow. WinDbg over firewire is much
much much faster than serial but will never be quiet as fast as single
stepping on a single machine.

Given that firewire card are about £15 each you should try it, I would
suggest running WinXP SP1 because it has a better firewire debug protocol
(WinDbg v6.0.17 supports both protocols) that appears to be faster, one word
of warning with SP1 it appears that some changes to the 1394 driver stack
caused my WinDbg to loose the debug link sometimes during boot, this can be
resolved by disabling the 1394 controller in device manager, now it all
works wonderfully.

Enjoy better debugging with WinDbg,
Roger

Roger Coote,
Senior Design Engineer
PowerVR Technologies, A Division of Imagination Technologies Ltd
Home Park Estate, Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, WD4 8LZ, UK
phone :+44 (1923) 260511 fax :+44 (1923) 268969
direct :+44 (1923) 277274
mailto:xxxxx@powervr.com www.powervr.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Ryan [mailto:xxxxx@nryan.com]
Sent: 05 September 2002 23:29
To: Kernel Debugging Interest List
Subject: [windbg] WinDbg speed?

After realizing just how much more functional the more recent versions
of WinDbg are compared to SoftIce, I went through the effort of setting
up WinDbg in my environment a few weeks ago in order to evaluate it.
It’s great in many ways, but WinDbg’s fatal flaw is its speed. The speed
is simply not acceptable over a null-modem connection (even at 57600
baud). I am typically stepping over pages of code per minute while
debugging, and WinDbg seems to take a large fraction of a second or so
to single-step a single line, even with most of the windows closed.

Now I know the FireWire interface is available (if only for XP), but
before I go out and buy two FireWire cards I want to know if this will
bring WinDbg up to an appropriate level of speed. I certainly would love
to get rid of SoftIce and all its bugs (if you’re reading this
Compuware, thanks for breaking the ERESOURCE command in v2.7).

  • Nicholas Ryan

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2

I also have problems with windbg’s speed. Sometimes I wonder exactly what
it could possibly be doing! One thing I did discover is that having a watch
window open with leftover variable names from some other breakpoint that are
not valid in the current context greatly slows the thing down as it tries
heroically to resolve those variables at each singlestep.

-----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Ryan [mailto:xxxxx@nryan.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 6:29 PM
To: Kernel Debugging Interest List
Subject: [windbg] WinDbg speed?

After realizing just how much more functional the more recent versions
of WinDbg are compared to SoftIce, I went through the effort of setting
up WinDbg in my environment a few weeks ago in order to evaluate it.
It’s great in many ways, but WinDbg’s fatal flaw is its speed. The speed
is simply not acceptable over a null-modem connection (even at 57600
baud). I am typically stepping over pages of code per minute while
debugging, and WinDbg seems to take a large fraction of a second or so
to single-step a single line, even with most of the windows closed.

Now I know the FireWire interface is available (if only for XP), but
before I go out and buy two FireWire cards I want to know if this will
bring WinDbg up to an appropriate level of speed. I certainly would love
to get rid of SoftIce and all its bugs (if you’re reading this
Compuware, thanks for breaking the ERESOURCE command in v2.7).

  • Nicholas Ryan

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To unsubscribe send a blank email to %%email.unsub%%

3

“Nicholas Ryan” wrote in message news:xxxxx@windbg…

> Now I know the FireWire interface is available (if only for XP), but
> before I go out and buy two FireWire cards I want to know if this will
> bring WinDbg up to an appropriate level of speed. I certainly would love
> to get rid of SoftIce and all its bugs (if you’re reading this
> Compuware, thanks for breaking the ERESOURCE command in v2.7).

Though it’s not quite as fast as single machine debugging, Firewire
debugging rocks! I got two generic 1394 boards at CompUSA for ~$30 (US)
late 2001. I suspect you can find a pair in that ballpark somewhere.

Phil
–
Philip D. Barila
Seagate Technology, LLC
(720) 684-1842

4

“Nicholas Ryan” wrote in message news:xxxxx@windbg…
>
> Now I know the FireWire interface is available (if only for XP), but
> before I go out and buy two FireWire cards I want to know if this will
> bring WinDbg up to an appropriate level of speed. I certainly would love
> to get rid of SoftIce and all its bugs (if you’re reading this
> Compuware, thanks for breaking the ERESOURCE command in v2.7).
>

I have found that the speed using FireWire is generally not noticably
different than single machine debugging.

I prefer dual machine debugging as I do not wish to risk that a critical
crash takes out my development environment, and potentially scrogging my
source code.

The REAL plus of using the latest WinDbg’s is that you can use the symbol
server provided by MS and not have to worry as to whether your symbol DB is
current or not.