Blogs|Mar 8, 2014

Do PDB Files Affect Performance?

After a detour into Historical Debugging, it’s time to come back to return to answering questions about PDB files. Here’s a question from Justin: Thanks for the great post once again. I was looking forward to your debugging virtual training, but unfortunately it was cancelled. The company I work for is pushing pack against building…
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Blogs|Mar 8, 2014

Keeping Specific PDB Files from Loading in the Debugger

As I’ve discussed, PDB files are wondrous bundles of binary joy. However, loading missing PDB files can quickly become an angst-ridden teenager as you wait what seems like forever on a network timeout for missing symbols. This is especially apparent in Tom’s question: For nearly two years I’ve been searching the Internet for an answer…
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Blogs|Mar 8, 2014

PDB Files: What Every Developer Must Know

Thanks for visiting one of the most popular pieces I’ve ever written! Based on questions I’ve written a few follow up articles you might find useful to extend your PDB knowledge after reading this one. Keeping Specific PDB Files from Loading in the Debugger Do PDB Files Affect Performance? Correctly Creating Native C++ Release Build…
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Blogs|Mar 2, 2014

ProcMonDebugOutput Now on GitHub

A few years ago Mark Russinovich and I put together a feature in SysInternal’s Process Monitor where you can add tracing statements to the log. (Here’s the original post.) The idea was that by seeing your tracing in line with the wonderful Process Monitor I/O reporting, it would be easier to track down problems in…
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Blogs|Feb 23, 2014

ProcDump Post Mortem Switches: Order Matters

This week I’m working behind the “Great Firewall” in China and Twitter is blocked by the Chinese government, but my blog is not. I would have tweeted this but instead dear reader, you get the complete back story along with the debugging challenge on how I figured out the problem. While working with a customer…
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wintellect-blogs|Nov 24, 2013

Productivity Power Tools Used to Fix Itself (@tasks rocks)

The Productivity Power Tools extension is one of those must haves in Visual Studio, especially if you are showing Visual Studio as a presenter. Typing PresentOn in the Quick Launch (CTRL+Q) box makes the IDE font, menu items, and dialog text bigger so everything in the IDE is easier to see. My life is good…
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Blogs|Sep 7, 2013

Fixing Outlook Hangs

Wintellect’s most important client, my wife, comes to me and says that her Outlook desktop application is all messed up. It hasn’t connected and downloaded emails in over five hours. She’s rebooted the computer and done basic Outlook trouble shooting that she found on the web but Outlook never connects to her Exchange server. Considering…
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Blogs|Jun 13, 2013

Automatically Load the Right SOS for the Minidump

Don’t you just love the following error message when trying to debug a minidump with SOS and WinDBG? The version of SOS does not match the version of CLR you are debugging.  Please load the matching version of SOS for the version of CLR you are debugging. CLR Version: 4.0.30319.1 SOS Version: 4.0.30319.235 SOS is…
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Blogs|May 9, 2013

Visual Studio vs. the PowerShell Command Line

Numerous times in the last month I’ve been working with different teams and when I whip out my PowerShell window and start doing all the magic, especially with Visual Studio command line tools, the young kids go crazy. The mix of command line development tools and PowerShell is a powerful aphrodisiac. Too bad that Visual…
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wintellect-blogs|Apr 30, 2013

In Seattle/Olympia/Portland? Want to learn how to maximize IntelliTrace?

On May 9th, I’ll be speaking at the South Sound .NET User Group in Olympia, WA on all about IntelliTrace. See location and signup info here. IntelliTrace is the first real Windows debugging technology since the hair band days of the 1980’s. This session will be PowerPoint free and nothing but demos and questions on…
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