Motley says: "The only tool I need is the debugger (Part 1)"

  • Article

  • Summary

  • Motley: The debugger is my most valuable tool as a developer.

  • Maven: Check out other tools that will give you the big picture of the current state of your system, including Process Monitor, Process Explorer, and AutoRuns.

  • ______________________________

  • [Context: Maven is observing Motley work and notices that Motley's favorite tool is the debugger]

  • Maven: Hey, Mot. I noticed that you spend a lot of time in the debugger. I must say, you're pretty good at it, but have you considered that there may be other tools that can do some jobs more effectively than the debugger?

  • Motley: Are you putting your nose in my business yet again? The debugger is the only tool that I need! And say, what are you doing watching me anyway?

  • Maven: I was just, uh, trying to learn how the master works.

  • Motley: Hmmm… good reason, I guess. Now that you have obviously buttered me up, what tools are you talking about?

  • Maven: There are plenty of good tools out there that help a developer be more effective, particularly when you do not have symbols and source for many of the applications you may be interacting with. For instance, a half hour ago I saw you flipping back and forth between Visual Studio (VS) and the registry editor trying to see what was changing. Process Monitor is a fantastic tool that no developer should be without! It captures a log of what is happening in the registry, as well general accesses to the file system. If you want to learn all about how an application behaves with the registry or with the file system, including logging errors and full process information, this is the tool for you.

  • Pasted from <https://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/processmonitor.mspx>

  • Motley: Do you realize how many entries logging all registry and file system accesses would generate?

  • Maven: A lot. But Process Monitor allows you to filter by process, type of access, and a host of other options. It also supports searching through all logged entries making finding what you are looking for very easy.

  • Motley: Perhaps I'll download it one of these days. It does sound intriguing. In the meantime, my handy-dandy debugger gives me a fairly complete view of what's going on.

  • Maven: But what if you have a situation where there is some system-wide slow-down and you want to figure out what's going on? The debugger is not the best tool for the job. Sure you could attach to a process and see what's going on, but that will take you quite a bit of effort!

  • Motley: That's what Task Manager is for! A little Ctrl+Shift+Escape combo and it's up and running.

  • Maven: Task Manager is an average tool, but how about something that kicks its butt!

  • Motley: Hard to one-up Task Manager, but let's hear it.

  • Maven: Process Explorer is a majorly cool tool that also fully supports Windows XP and Vista. It provides much more detailed information than you get with Task Manager, and there is a one-click option to replace task manager in Windows and automatically launch Process Explorer. This tool is invaluable for getting the complete picture of what is happening on your system, including detailed information about selected processes, system-wide CPU and disk-access graphs, and other helpful performance information.

  • Pasted from <https://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processexplorer.mspx>

  • Motley: Explorer? Monitor? Jeez, could they be a little more original with the naming??? Names aside, if it could show me what processes have what files open, that would indeed be a very cool tool!

  • Maven: It can do that, and much more! Just download it - it's a copy/paste installation and doesn't affect your machine state at all. While we're in that same family of tools, also check out AutoRuns. It comprehensively tells you all the stuff that loads automatically in your system and has hooks to Process Explorer so you can drill down into the details. There's a lot more going on than what's in your Startup folder!

  • Pasted from <https://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/autoruns.mspx>

  • Motley: I'm always curious why my system slows down as I install more stuff and have been looking for a good tool to help out there. AutoRuns sounds like it might do the trick.

  • Maven: There's lots of other good tools out there that can help us developers. Play around with those and I'll give you a few more that can make your life easier the next time we chat.

  • ______________________________

  • Maven's Pointer: In July 2006, Microsoft acquired Sysinternals.com, which was a fantastic site with all kinds of free utilities for download that make an administrator's, developer's or tester's life much easier. Since then, Microsoft has put up an index page for all of the utilities. The tools we talked about above are just the tip of the iceberg. Check out https://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx for more great tools that will make you a more efficient developer.

  • Maven's Resources:

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