“Who says you can’t bottle experience? Between these covers is a wealth of information: a clear, logical approach to finding and eliminating bugs. This is an absolute must-have book for anyone who develops, tests, or supports software for Microsoft Windows.”

-- 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

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 22 Ratings

A typical Microsoft stuff: - 2009-03-29
Reviewer Rating:
It is expensive, promises a lot and delivers next to nothing. The author concentrates of some specific problems, explains them in uninteligeble language, assuming that you already know all these Windows undocumented internals. I tried to find a problem in thread management with the help of this book and it was a waste of time. The application verifier is another product that most of the time crashes the computer and when it does not, it slows it to zero speed. Probably, one can pick in this book an explanation or two, but I would not count on it too much.

Simply The Best! - 2008-10-24
Reviewer Rating:
This is hands down the best book I have ever seen on the topic of Windows debugging. Whether you are chasing tricky synchronization issues, reverse engineering, or probing for security flaws, you'll do well to have this one handy. A bit pricey perhaps, but worth every penny.

If I had it 5 years ago I probably wouldn't have started blogging on crash dump analysis... - 2009-06-22
Reviewer Rating:
This is the book I wanted to read when I started doing Windows crash dump analysis more than 5 years ago. Although other excellent Windows debugging books existed at that time including "Debugging Applications" written by John Robbins and "Debugging Windows Programs: Strategies, Tools, and Techniques for Visual C++ Programmers" written by Everett N. McKay and Mike Woodring I needed a book that discusses debugging in the context of WinDbg and other tools from Debugging Tools for Windows package. So I had to learn from day-to-day experience and WinDbg help. Now WinDbg is a de facto standard in debugging and troubleshooting on Windows platforms and the book comes at the right time to teach the best practices and techniques. I'm reading it sequentially and I'm on the page 387 at the moment and I have already learnt techniques and debugging strategies I missed due to certain habits in using WinDbg. See my real time reading notes on Software Generalist blog. Even if you do mostly memory dump analysis and not live debugging of your product, you also will learn a lot to apply in your day-to-day problem identification and troubleshooting. Absolutely must have for any Windows software engineers, escalation engineers and technical support engineers willing to advance their debugging skills.

Thanks,
Dmitry Vostokov
Founder of DumpAnalysis Portal
Editor-in-Chief of Debugged! MZ/PE magazine

Impressive reality-based reference work - 2009-07-31
Reviewer Rating:
My kind of book is concise, accurate, to the point, full of technical detail, based on extensive real-world experience, absorbing, and practically applicable. This is my kind of book. Well worth the money.

Destined to be a Classic - 2008-12-23
Reviewer Rating:
I approach debugging from a security perspective and am used to Ollydbg and IDA pro. I had no idea about the power and usefulness of Windbg. Beyond that, I have learned more from this one book about Windows internals than the last two Windows Internals editions combined (not knocking the internals books - just elaborating on how much I have gotten from this one book already). The sections on memory corruption, IPC and Security are gems - but every part of this book is outstanding. The introduction and explanation of other tools such as App Verifier, glags, etc. provides a solid reference for the what these tools are and how to use them. I will be using this book

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