3/12/2009

03-12-09 - Debugging Question

If I have a process under debug in MSVC , and I want to switch to debugging with WinDbg - how do I do that? WinDbg refuses to attach because it's already being debugged. If I "detach" with MSVC, the process immediately runs free (ceases to be stopped) which makes me lose the moment I was trying to debug. Urg. WTF ?

I need this because I want to write out a block of memory from my process to disk, which it seems MSVC won't do, but WinDbg with .writemem .

Another question is : how do I get a *full* crash dump of a process? (with all its memory). If you use "write crash dump" from MSVC, it only writes a "minidump" which is just registers, call stack, that kind of stuff.

WinDbg can write a full crash dump very easily (with .dump) , but I can't figure out how to change debuggers.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I can't answer the first question.

But you can write a full dump from VS, from Debug>Save Dump As..., and then on the bottom drop down list select Minidump with Heap.

cbloom said...

Ah, the "Save as type" drop down menu! Yep that does it. Thanks.

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