TABLE OF CONTENTS Programmers need to be familiar with the operating systems on which their applications will run, just as administrators need to. While developing software, a programmer is often left scratching his head, trying to figure out why something is not working or why a process behaves in a certain way. Software integrated development environments (IDEs) and Software Development Kits (SDKs) provide a slew of debugging tools to assist programmers in this effort. Unfortunately, many times these tools are not enough and developers need to turn to the same tools system administrators use.
In this chapter, we will examine a few of the tools provided by the Winternals group that any software developer would find useful. From implementing trace functionality, to application optimization, to low-level debugging and advanced technical support, we will see how the available tools can make a programmer s life easier.
Application tracing is a way to monitor an application while it is running and get valuable data that can assist in debugging. While in development, you can use the built-in debugging capabilities of modern IDEs, but when the application is deployed, either to a customer or to a test box, all internal debugging information is lost and you have compiled in release mode. If something goes wrong, it becomes a guessing game to determine what may have caused the crash or incorrect functionality. Unfortunately, since you cannot install development tools on a test computer, and even more so on a customer s computer, you...
