Practical Foundations of Windows Debugging, Disassembling, Reversing

This training course is a reformatted, improved, and modernized version of the previous x64 Windows Debugging: Practical Foundations book, which drew inspiration from the original lectures we developed 22 years ago to train support and escalation engineers in debugging and crash dump analysis of memory dumps from Windows applications, services, and systems. At that time, when thinking about what material to deliver, we realized that a solid understanding of fundamentals like pointers is needed to analyze stack traces beyond a few WinDbg commands. Therefore, this book is not about bugs or debugging techniques but about the background knowledge everyone needs to start experimenting with WinDbg, learn from practical experience, and read other advanced debugging books. This body of knowledge is what the author of this book possessed before starting memory dump analysis using WinDbg 18 years ago, which resulted in the number one debugging bestseller: the multi-volume Memory Dump Analysis Anthology (Diagnomicon). Now, in retrospection, we see these practical foundations as relevant and necessary to acquire for beginners as they were more than 20 years ago, because operating systems internals, assembly language, and compiler architecture haven't changed much in those years.

The third edition, with new material on arrays and floating point, was completely remastered in full color. The text was also reviewed, and a few previous mistakes were corrected. The book is also slimmer because the x86 32-bit chapters were removed. They are still available in the previous edition, which will not be out of print soon. The third edition is entirely x64.

The book is useful for:

• Software technical support and escalation engineers
• Software engineers coming from a managed code or JVM background
• Software testers
• Engineers coming from non-Wintel environments
• Windows C/C++ software engineers without an assembly language background
• Security researchers without an x64 assembly language background
• Beginners learning Windows software reverse engineering techniques

This introductory training course can complement the more advanced Accelerated Disassembly, Reconstruction, and Reversing course. It may also help with advanced exercises in Accelerated Windows Memory Dump Analysis, Accelerated Rust Windows Memory Dump Analysis, Accelerated Windows Debugging⁴, Accelerated Windows API for Software Diagnostics, Accelerated Windows Malware Analysis with Memory Dumps, and Memory Thinking books for C and C++. This book can also be used as an Intel assembly language and Windows debugging supplement for relevant undergraduate-level courses.

Dmitry Vostokov is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, educator, scientist, inventor, and author. He founded the pattern-oriented software diagnostics, forensics, and prognostics discipline (Systematic Software Diagnostics) and Software Diagnostics and Observability Institute. Vostokov has also authored over 50 books on software diagnostics, anomaly detection and analysis, software and memory forensics, root cause analysis and problem solving, memory dump analysis, debugging, software trace and log analysis, reverse engineering, and malware analysis. He has over 30 years of experience in software architecture, design, development, and maintenance in various industries, including leadership, technical, and people management roles. Dmitry founded OpenTask Iterative and Incremental Publishing and Software Diagnostics Technology and Services (former Memory Dump Analysis Services). In his spare time, he explores Software Narratology and Quantum Software Diagnostics. His interest areas are theoretical software diagnostics and its mathematical and computer science foundations, application of formal logic, semiotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data mining to diagnostics and anomaly detection, software diagnostics engineering and diagnostics-driven development, diagnostics workflow and interaction. Recent interest areas also include functional programming, cloud native computing, monitoring, observability, visualization, security, automation, applications of category theory to software diagnostics, development and big data, and diagnostics of artificial intelligence.