WinDbg Debugging Tips

This topic provides answers and workarounds for common WinDbg debugging questions and problems.

Windows Symbols

You may want to use the Microsoft Symbol Server to obtain debug symbol files. For more information, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311503.

WinDbg Workspace Configuration

When you first start WinDbg, it uses the default workspace. A workspace includes search paths and stores user-loaded extensions, like the RTX64 WinDbg Extension. It's a good idea to save the base workspace information in WinDbg once you have loaded symbols and extensions.

WinDbg loads a new workspace when you do something new, such as load a new postmortem dump, attach to a new live system.

Using Verbose Mode

Before setting Symbols in WinDbg, it's a good idea to turn on the verbose setting so that you can confirm settings:

To turn on verbose mode: Kd>!sym noisy
To display the current settings: Kd>lml

Forcing Changes to Settings

You can force WinDbg to accept a setting with:

Kd>.reload /f rtx_rtss.sys

or:

Kd>.reload /f rtx_halext.sys

“No Export !rtprocess found” when using !rtprocess

Make sure you set up the RTX64 extensions as described in the previous section. If WinDbg still returns any error like “No export [extension] found,” you might want to execute a .chain command, which lists all loaded extensions.

Memory Dump File Compatibility between RTX64 Versions

In order to load a Windows memory dump file from RTX64 2014 in the RTX64 2014 with Service Pack 1 WinDbg Extension, you must first copy the subsystem .PDB files from RTX64 2014 to the RTX64 2014 with Service Pack 1 setup.