hi all,
i've just installed this worderful debugger.
After a look to the manual i couldn't find the following answers:
-how can i see clearly stack values (stack window)
-how can i save all the settings to find them back after restart of PC ?
If some help THX
"ws" toggles the stack window and "ws 30" (for example) would give you a stack window size of 30.
In your winice.dat is a line "INIT="X;"(default) which is where you can put all of your initialization settings. So you could put "INIT="X;WS 30;" for the above example. The trailing semi-colon may not be necessary. I don't really remember.
While on this topic, im curious. Is there actually a practical purpose for this 'utility' or is it just a hacking tool? I've seen and used debuggers, but i havent seen a debugger that is loaded before your operating system is... and my OS has been surpringly stable for mounths! (so im reluctant to be currious).
I've known about it for a while, but never seen it in action. I have no interests in hackin/cracking, but if im wrong in assuming its just for that, then perhapse i should check it out....
If there is anyone willing to enlighten me, i would be interested in your thoughts.
SoftIce is only debugger I got. I been using it for last three years and now I just use it for debugging my own programs. Even if I write the code I'm still to blind to see the errors sometimes so that's where softice comes into the picture. I use an api that I don't call in my program and that takes no parameters like DestroyCaret and can watch registers do their thing. Its the best debugger I ever used and cant do without it.
best regards,
czDrillard
Until now i was using OLLYDBG. It is a very good debugger, it worth try it :) ! Work on win32, is quite small to download and FREE. But's only for 32bit apps. In this debugger you don't need to remember WS WC ... or other damned mnemonics... you do all by mouse & menu.
Since i'm working to a 32 bit app. that call a function in a 16 bit dll, once entered on 16 bit code i couldn't debug it.
With softice this is possible. This is the reason why i've installed it. But i don't like his command prompt.
a debugger is also usefull for your own programs. take for example a program that simulates something physical or where you need equations. now imagine the program doesn't work as you want it to do. so where's the problem? you can go a thousand times through the code and żou often won't find the error. when you use a debugger you can check all values in registers and see if everything is correctly calculated.
i used the debugger very often when i made my "balls" program that you can download on my website.
of course, most people use softICe for cracking. seeing how a program works is interesting.
In my humble opinion, softice is problably the best debugger around.
It takes some time to harness it's power, though. I'm into reverse
engineering, that's how I stumbled upon softice. These days I
hardly do any reverse engineering, but softice is still my debugger
of choice. When I have bugs in my programs, softice is about the
only thing I can find them with - I tend to do sorta lowlevel stuff,
since I'm working on protection stuff and such.
Every once in a while, I use a ring3 debugger. Like when booting
under win2k, I have to use ollydbg. I haven't got NT-ice, and I've
heard a lot of rumors that NTice doesn't like geforce2 cards.
I also usually use the visual studio debugger when debugging my
C apps (unless it's one of those REALLY freaky errors).
Ring3 debuggers have a lot of limitations. They won't let you trace
into system code, they have problems with certain protection schemes
(like when you use SEH in tricksy ways), etc etc etc.
Anyway. Bottom line: softice is not just a cracking tool. And it
definitely has nothing to do with a HACKING tool. It's sort of a
nice calm feeling...being in control, pausing your entire system,
giving YOU the choice.
I agree that it's the best debugger around. Like f0dder I have used it a lot for cracking, so I'm totally used to the way it works. But now I use it primarily for debugging my asm programs. Only sometimes when I'm lazy I use visual studio's debugger (it's easy to just press cancel on an error or int 3 breakpoint and go to the debugger immediately).
Thomas
Kool, thanx for the heads up... Personally, when i encounter an error I systematicaly 'trap' it with Ernie's DMACROS.INC. Its not his macros, but its just the way i have always been doing it (seems like eons now, at least since i started on the C=64) :D
But f0dder's point of the 'calm feeling' and control has got me thinking perhaps its time to get outa the stone-age...
Anywho thanx all again.