Debugging Tools for Windows (WinDbg, KD, CDB, NTSD). 2 minutes to read. Contributors. In this article Start here for an overview of Debugging Tools for Windows. This tool set includes WinDbg and other debuggers.

• Windbg Alternatives For Mac

Windbg Alternatives For Mac

3 ways to get Debugging Tools for Windows. As part of the WDK Debugging Tools for Windows is included in the WDK. As a standalone tool set If you want to download only Debugging Tools for Windows, and, during the installation, select the Debugging Tools for Windows box and clear all the other boxes.

As part of the Windows SDK Install the complete Windows Software Development Kit (SDK). Debugging Tools for Windows is included in the Windows SDK. Getting Started with Windows Debugging To get started with Windows debugging, see. To get started with debugging kernel mode drivers, see. This is a step by step lab that shows how to use WinDbg to debug the sample KMDF echo driver.

Debugging environments After you install Visual Studio and the WDK, you'll have six available. All of these debugging environments provide user interfaces for the same underlying debugging engine, which is implemented in dbgeng.dll. This debugging engine is called the Windows debugger, and the six debugging environments are collectively called the Windows debuggers. Note Visual Studio includes its own debugging environment and debugging engine, which together are called the Visual Studio debugger.

For information on debugging in Visual Studio, see. If you are looking to debug managed code such as C#, using the Visual Studio debugger is often the easiest way to get started. Windows debuggers The Windows debuggers can run on x86-based, x64-based, or ARM-based processors, and they can debug code that's running on x86-based, x64-based, or ARM-based processors. Sometimes the debugger and the code being debugged run on the same computer, but other times the debugger and the code being debugged run on separate computers. In either case, the computer that's running the debugger is called the host computer, and the computer that is being debugged is called the target computer.

The Windows debuggers support the following versions of Windows for both the host and target computers. Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Symbols and Symbol Files Symbol files hold a variety of data which are not actually needed when running the binaries, but are very useful when debugging code.

For more information about creating and using symbol files, see. Blue Screens and crash dump files If Windows stops working and displays a blue screen, the computer has shut down abruptly to protect itself from data loss and displays a bug check code. For more information, see. You analyze crash dump files that are created when Windows shuts down by using WinDbg and other Windows debuggers. For more information, see.

Tools and utilities In addition to the debuggers, Debugging Tools for Windows includes a set of tools that are useful for debugging. For a full list of the tools, see.

Additional documentation For additional information related to Debugging Tools for Windows, see. For information on what's new in Windows 10, see. In this section.

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