Practical Foundations of Windows Debugging, Disassembling, Reversing (3rd Edition)

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.