x86 Adventures

Hello human assemblers, and welcome to part 0xa of x86 Assembly Adventures! In this part we are going to learn about the WinDbg debugger, and how to use it to find and solve problems in our programs.

A debugger is a program that could be used to inspect the operation of another program. In this part we are going to study WinDbg and use it to "debug" our programs. We will learn by example, trying everything in real world situations.

WinDbg is the professional choice for debugging on the Windows operation system. It is free to download from Microsoft, and is actually being used internally by Microsoft.

Topics covered in this part:

• Introduction to debuggers and how they work.
• Downloading and Installing WinDbg.
• Basic control with WinDbg.
• State inspection with WinDbg (How to read and change different values of our program when it is paused).
• Using software and hardware breakpoints with WinDbg.
• Dealing with Exceptions using WinDbg.

This part is definately not a complete course on WinDbg (There is so much more to learn), but it does cover the main topics you need to know to begin working with WinDbg.