Developing Drivers with the Windows® Driver Foundation

WinDbg Basics

WinDbg is used in distinctly different ways for UMDF drivers and KMDF drivers. However, several basic WinDbg features and practices apply to both UMDF and KMDF drivers, as described in this section.

Note

In Windows Vista and later versions, most debugging tools—including WinDbg—must run with elevated privileges. The simplest way to do this is to right-click the WinDbg icon and click Run as administrator. All instructions to run WinDbg in this chapter assume that you will run WinDbg with elevated privileges in Windows Vista.

Checked versus Free Builds

The Build utility supports two types of build: checked and free. WinDbg can be used with either build type, but checked builds are usually preferred for debugging because:

• Most compiler optimization ...