Live Debug

[Dietmar]

Hi all,
when I am running the continous demo of 3DMark2001SE on a SDI image I get
after a while the message that memory cant be written. So my question is:
Are there simple steps, to do a live debug with windbg via com1
baudrate=115200 in boot.ini of the target computer, to see what happens?
The size of the SDI image is 378MB and I have 4GB of ram.

Thanks
Dietmar

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Dietmar,

Windbg can be used for debuging user mode application, but it is so hard
that you would not want to do this.
Can you can install network and only remote part of debugging that is part
of Visual Studio. This is much easier since you can debug from VS IDE remote
target.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Dietmar]

Hi Slobodan,
thanks I will do that.

Have I do use Visual Studio or is the only needed remote part to debug the
target computer also included in Visual C++ version 6 ?

Dietmar

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Dietmar,

You will need only remote part of debugger on XPe machine.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[KM]

Dietmar,

You will just need the remote part. Depending on the version of VS you are going to use (6.0, .Net 2003, 2005) the list of files on
target would change.

A few links for you:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvc60/html/redistribvc6.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...ry/en-us/dnembedded/html/embedded06072004.asp
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.embedded/msg/c4b77ddb70c25960?hl=en
http://groups-beta.google.com/group...c254010cdb6/08f47c3e83ee8737#08f47c3e83ee8737

KM

PS. Remebering your old question about SoftIce vs WinDbg.. That is where SoftIce wins the battle. It is good, useful and convinient
for both - user and kernel mode apps. Unfortunately, it is not as good on remote side as Windbg. So you wouldn't want to
componentize the SoftIce software unless you've got pretty fat image anyway.

 

[Dietmar]

Thank You Slobodan and Konstantin,

I found an error in the behavior of the ATI Radeon driver. First I thought
this was only in the Ati Radeon 9700 driver component that comes with XPE
SP2. ( Black screen sometimes unpredictable when, not related to
powersaving, I did the methode described by Konstantin and changed the
policies registry entries , memory cant be written message, crashing
machine with the game Battlefield 1942 in RAM and so on).
But the same is with NEWEST Catalyst driver which I integrated in my SDI
image.

Nothing of that happens on XPPRO.

I changed to an Nvidia card (Geforce2 MX400).
I succeed to integrate the newest Nvidia driver. All the problems I ever
had with unstability are gone now. I saw posts here with problems with
ATI Radeon cards (I remember Radeon 9100 and 9200).
Do You think that there is a problem with some ATI cards in XPE or can
this occur because of a memory of 256MB on the grafikcard because the
Nvidia has only 64MB? The problem is NOT related to SDI. I found the same
behavior on a large BOOTDVD with EWF enabled.

Dietmar

 

[KM]

Dietmar,

I must admit I couldn't figure out what your exact problem now.
Is it that your monitor goes off after some while? Why do you think it is video driver related? (do you see the monitor on when the
screen is black?)
Or is it that with NVidia card/driver the problem goes away?

I don't think there is any problem with ATI video cards on XPe if they work fine on XP Pro (and they are). As you already know, you
should check SetupApi.log file to see if anything went wrong with the display driver.

Also, you may want to play with power policies. I can give you a bunch of API to start with
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/power/base/setactivepwrscheme.asp). But for simplicity, start with
powercfg.exe tool (XPe SP2).
http://www.jsifaq.com/subL/tip5500/rh5594.htm

Konstantin

 

[Dietmar]

Hi Konstantin,
it is as I said: With Nvidia drivers all stability problems are gone but I
dont know why the Ati 9700 All in Wonder (256MB) causes them.
It is perhaps because something total different.
I noticed, that my memory "grows" from 3555MB with the Ati card (256MB) to
3701MB with the Nvidia card (64MB)with the same AGP apertur size in Bios.
This is because memoryadresses of the graficcard conflicts with
memoryadresses from ram in the near of 4Gb. And this may be the solution,
why there is no troubel with the Nvidia card.

Dietmar

PS: This cant be: I notice the same behavior with the Ati card when I
change complete ram against another with 2Gb. Still there are NO stability
problems with the Nvidia card but they come back with Ati.