Advanced Windows Debugging at Dominant Systems Book Store

-- Bob Wilton, Escalation Engineer, Critical Problem Resolution Team, Microsoft

“An excellent reference for both intermediate and advanced debuggers: highly practical, and filled with tricks and strategies. This book stands out from all other Win32 debugging literature, thanks to its in-depth examples–including resolving intricate problems like stack and heap corruptions.”

-- Kinshuman, Development Lead, Windows Core OS Division, Microsoft

The First In-Depth, Real-World, Insider’s Guide to Powerful Windows Debugging

For Windows developers, few tasks are more challenging than debugging–-or more crucial. Reliable and realistic information about Windows debugging has always been scarce. Now, with over 15 years of experience two of Microsoft’s system-level developers present a thorough and practical guide to Windows debugging ever written.

Mario Hewardt and Daniel Pravat cover debugging throughout the entire application lifecycle and show how to make the most of the tools currently available–-including Microsoft’s powerful native debuggers and third-party solutions.

To help you find real solutions fast, this book is organized around real-world debugging scenarios. Hewardt and Pravat use detailed code examples to illuminate the complex debugging challenges professional developers actually face. From core Windows operating system concepts to security, Windows® Vista™ and 64-bit debugging, they address emerging topics head-on–and nothing is ever oversimplified or glossed over!

This book enables you to

Master today’s most powerful Windows debugging tools, including NTSD, CDB, WinDbg, KD, and ADPlus
Debug code that wasn’t designed or written for easy debugging
Understand debuggers “under the hood,” and manage symbols and sources efficiently
Debug complex memory corruptions related to stacks and heaps
Resolve complex security problems
Debug across processes: identity tracking, RPC debugger extensions, and tracking IPCs with Ethereal
Find and fix resource leaks, such as memory and handle leaks.
Debug common thread synchronization problems
Learn when and how to write custom debugger extensions
Perform “postmortem debugging” using crash dumps and Windows Error Reporting
Automate debugging with DebugDiag and the Analyze Debugger command

Whether you’re a system-level or application developer, Advanced Windows Debugging delivers the deep understanding of debugging that could save you weeks on your very next project.

Part I Overview

Chapter 1 Introduction to the Tools

Chapter 2 Introduction to the Debuggers

Chapter 3 Debugger Uncovered

Chapter 4 Managing Symbol and Source Files

Part II Applied Debugging

Chapter 5 Memory Corruptions Part I – Stacks

Chapter 6 Memory Corruptions Part I – Heaps

Chapter 7 Security

Chapter 8 Inter-process Communication

Chapter 9 Resource Leaks

Chapter 10 Synchronization

Part III Advanced Topics

Chapter 11 Writing Custom Debugger Extensions

Chapter 12 64-bit Debugging

Chapter 13 Postmortem Debugging

Chapter 14 Power Tools

Chapter 15 Windows Vista Fundamentals

Appendix A Application Verifier Test Settings

If you like Advanced Windows Debugging, keep an eye out for ADVANCED .NET DEBUGGING COMING IN NOV. 2009.

Customer Reviews & Comments
As a technical supervisor, one of the biggest problems I have is training our development teams in the use of the various debugging tools available. I purchased a copy of this book hoping it would help me in that training, and I was not disappointed. This book goes far beyond my expectations and provides insight into not only the use of the various debuggers, explaining how to set breakpoints and analyze memory locations, but it also goes into detail on how to debug some of the more insidious problems common to developers. The chapters on thread synchronization and stack and heap corruptions are excellent and provide invaluable insight into debugging these common problems. But more than that, the book outlines and gives instructions on using some of the lesser known debugging aids, such as the application verifier and the leak diagnosis tool, as well as writing your own debugger extensions. There is a chapter on post-mortem debugging, which goes into detail on using crash dump files, instructions on obtaining information from the Windows reporting service and a chapter on managing symbol and source files. Finally, there are chapters on debugging Vista applications, security problems, and interprocess communications. The authors are clearly masters of debugging windows applications, and this book stands alone in the field. I am a senior C++ engineer with over ten years of experience writing applications for windows and linux, and I found new information in every chapter, all of it easy to understand and well written.

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