As surprising as you may find this, I’m going to write a couple of blog posts about WPP Tracing. Some Background for Context Those of you who’ve followed us for a while know that we haven’t exactly been known as fans of WPP Tracing over the past few years. Well, as Chaucer said “As tyme […]
!pool Broken for Windows 10 Build 10586 Targets
I’ll start by stating that the Debugging Tools team is aware of this problem and a fix the public PDBs is in the pipeline. It might take a while for that to show up, so I wanted to make sure everyone was aware of the issue. The !pool WinDbg command has been rendered useless when […]
Checked Kernel and HAL back in the WDK!
While installing an entire checked build has always been a pain, a Partial Checked Build gives you the majority of the benefit without all of the hassle. For a long while now the WDK has shipped with the checked kernel and HAL from the corresponding Windows release, which made it even easier to get your code running […]
Fun With WinDBG – NatVis Support
Complex data structures are a way of life when you’re dealing with drivers. A lot of the structures at driver callbacks end up being gnarly enough, and it’s not uncommon to write a few of your own. Wading your way through the 9 layers of pointers to divine something about the driver state at the […]
Right Click Your DML!
You all know and love DML, those hyperlinks that show up in WinDbg output and allow you to click around aimlessly while you ponder what the crash code means (“PC LOAD LETTER??”). But, did you know that DML is even better in the Windows 10 build of WinDbg? Support has been added for a game changing feature: […]
Newbie Corner: Breaking Windows
One of my favorite parts of learning a new programming model is learning what happens when something fails. Getting a simple program built and running is fun and all, but until you dig in to a serious project you don’t realize what the repercussions are for your stupid blindly obvious mistakes. Once you do make […]
New Tools Introduced at WinHEC 2015
Across various presentations at WinHEC, several new tools have been introduced for use by Windows driver writers. There’s no real overarching theme to these tools, they touch different parts of the driver development process and don’t necessarily all target the same audience. However, they’re new and potentially useful, so I thought it worth summarizing them […]
Setting the WinDbg Symbol Search Path (article + video)
When people post the output from the WinDbg !analyze -v command to our NTDEV support forum, it’s often useless. The kernel stack doesn’t make sense. And there are banners and error messages saying “the symbols are wrong.” When this happens, the next thing that occurs is often a chorus of replies saying little more than “Fix your symbols and then repost […]
Setting up a 1394 Kernel Debug Connection (Video)
Setting up a kernel debug connection can be intimidating at first, but it’s actually quite straightforward once you have the steps. It’s the sort of thing that’s much easier to demonstrate than it is to explain, so here’s a video of Scott Noone walking through the process.
WDK Visual Studio Integration: A Good or Bad Thing? (Video)
The WDK being integrated into Visual Studio is certainly a big change, but is a good one? Peter and I are asked our opinions on WDK Visual Studio integration all the time, so we decided that it was time to get together and discuss it. Sure, we could have come to a consensus and published an article […]
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