Inside Windows Debugging

Use Windows debuggers throughout the development cycle—and build better software

Rethink your use of Windows debugging and tracing tools—and learn how to make them a key part of test-driven software development. Led by a member of the Windows Fundamentals Team at Microsoft, you’ll apply expert debugging and tracing techniques—and sharpen your C++ and C# code analysis skills—through practical examples and common scenarios. Learn why experienced developers use debuggers in every step of the development process, and not just when bugs appear.

Discover how to:

• Go behind the scenes to examine how powerful Windows debuggers work
• Catch bugs early in the development cycle with static and runtime analysis tools
• Gain practical strategies to tackle the most common code defects
• Apply expert tricks to handle user-mode and kernel-mode debugging tasks
• Implement postmortem techniques such as JIT and dump debugging
• Debug the concurrency and security aspects of your software
• Use debuggers to analyze interactions between your code and the operating system
• Analyze software behavior with Xperf and the Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) framework

Online Sample Chapters

How Windows Debuggers Work

Software Development in Windows

Sample Pages

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Table of Contents

• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: A Bit of Background
  • Chapter 1: Software Development in Windows
• Part 2: Debugging for Fun and Profit
  • Chapter 2: Getting Started
  • Chapter 3: How Windows Debuggers Work
  • Chapter 4: Postmortem Debugging
  • Chapter 5: Beyond the Basics
  • Chapter 6: Code Analysis Tools
  • Chapter 7: Expert Debugging Tricks
  • Chapter 8: Common Debugging Scenarios, Part 1
  • Chapter 9: Common Debugging Scenarios, Part 2
  • Chapter 10: Debugging System Internals
• Part 3: Observing and Analyzing Software Behavior
  • Chapter 11: Introducing Xperf
  • Chapter 12: Inside ETW
  • Chapter 13: Common Tracing Scenarios
  • WinDbg User-Mode Debugging Quick Start
  • WinDbg Kernel-Mode Debugging Quick Start

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