Application Debugging in a Productive Environment

The document you have at hand is made for people who have to support and maintain a production environment. In this course we'll try to give an answer on questions like : "yesterday it still worked and now it doesn't anymore, what did happen ?" or "why does it work on this computer and not on another one ?".

Each chapter can be seen as a stand alone par. However, some background information and knowledge like symbols usage and calling conventions ­ are essential parts you must know to follow this course.

Every part of this paper is explained as a walkthrough. This gives the student the possibility to use the document as reference material and/or as a workbook to learn some particular debugging scenarios. In no way this guide attempts to be a replacement for the manuals that come with the debuggers. The WinDbg debugger comes with such an outstanding and complete documentation that it is impossible to do better than that.

The reader of this document shouldn't be proficient in writing applications, nor should she/he be an expert in assembler or another language to follow this course. However, as with most things in live : "the more you know in advance, the better". The topics covered in this guide are rather complicated, but working with the WinDbg debugger is explained step by step.