Software Debugger

[dev invisible]

I didn't know if this should go under another character, so I just placed it here.  I'm looking to use a software debugger such as SoftICE to help me learn more about some programs and how they work.  When I use SoftICE, I press CTRL+D to enter the debug window.  But at that point my computer completely freezes.  Does anyone have any suggestions for me (previous threads or alternatives to softice).

Please move this to wherever it need be

[Adron]

SoftICE is a great tool to learn. You just push Ctrl-D and everything stops right where it is so you can study it. Then you hit Ctrl-D again and the world unfreezes.

If that's not what you want, you could try Windbg for debugging or IDA (or perhaps W32Dasm) for disassembling.

[iago]

Yeah, softice freezes everything while it's running, which can be a good thing, or a bad thing.

Pros:
Lets you have a snapshot to look at
Lets you play with stuff alone, so nobody else can
Lets you do a lot of really cool stuff (find a guide; there's A LOT of good stuff there)

Cons:
You'll lose network connections, like msn and icq and such
DO NOT use the system clock to time a pizza in the oven while using softice.  Your clock will fuck up as a result of stopping everything, and your pizza will burn.  Trust me.

[Adron]

Did you ever burn a pizza like that iago?

[iago]

Yup

[Adron]

Interesting. All I've done is been late to bed or other various things when I've been in Softice for 30 minutes or an hour and not remembered that later.

[iago]

Interesting. All I've done is been late to bed or other various things when I've been in Softice for 30 minutes or an hour and not remembered that later.

haha I've also done that.  I wish I could tell Windows XP to automatically update the system clock with time.microsoft.com every 15 minutes instead of every week, but I couldn't find the option to do that.  

Oddly, I've found that Softice works better under windows 2k than it ever did under xp, though.  Now I can set a breakpoint under, say, MessageBoxA, and it'll break on that in EVERY process.  Under xp, it would only break under the current process which made it hard to catch a program that did stuff on startup.

[dev invisible]

SoftICE does sound like what I want.  I currently have SoftIce Driver Suite 2.6.  I'm not sure if this is the latest (or the best to work with), any info on that?  Also.. when i press CTRL+D, I get the debug window to come up and everything freezes... but then I can't do anything at all.  No keyboard input seems to do anything.  Any suggestions?

[Adron]

I suggest you check the keyboard driver settings in softice. There's something about "patch keyboard driver", toggle that. Also make sure you give it the right symbol files for your kernel.

[dev invisible]

yes, after i ran my usb keyboard through a usb->ps2 adapter it worked fine.  If anyone has gotten SoftICE to work with usb keyboards, please share, else.. thank you all :-)

[iago]

I have a usb mouse, which *sometimes* works with Softice, seemingly at random.  My touchpad also works with softice *sometimes*.