Software Diagnostics Library

If you need to attach NTSD to a process on x64 Windows and to save a dump remember that there are two versions of NTSD: x86 (32-bit) and x64. The former is located in \Windows\SysWOW64 and should be used for attaching to 32-bit applications and services. IMA service, for example, is 32-bit in Citrix Presentation Server for x64, so if it hangs you need 32-bit debugger. For explanation why you need different versions of NTSD please refer to the first picture in my previous post: Dumps, Debuggers and Virtualization 

If you use WinDbg for that purpose install both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

If you want to install NTSD or WinDbg as a default postmortem debugger use Wow6432Node registry hive:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug

Debugger = ntsd -p %ld -e %ld -g -c ".dump /ma /u c:\TEMP\new.dmp; q"

Refer to the following Citrix support articles explaining and describing in more detail how to set NTSD and WinDbg as default postmortem debuggers:

How to Set NTSD as a Default Windows Postmortem Debugger

How to Set WinDbg as a Default Windows Postmortem Debugger

They will be updated soon to include WOW64 information.

- Dmitry Vostokov -

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 3:53 am and is filed under Crash Dump Analysis, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.