How do you resolve crashing Windbg Logger on Vista?

Question

I would like to use the Logger tool that ships with the Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows. However, on Vista it crashes even with built-in Vista applications:

> logger calc

or

> logger notepad

The issue occurs if I run the tool from a command prompt with or without administrator rights. I'm using version 3.01 (3/20/2008).

The last thing the Logger output window shows is "Verbose log Enabled".

If I attach a debugger I see that an "Access violation writing location 0x000000" error has occurred with the following call stack:

logexts.dll!_LogGetCategory@20()  + 0xb bytes   
logger.exe!PopulateLogextsSettings()  + 0x31 bytes  
logger.exe!SettingsDlgProc()  + 0x48 bytes  
user32.dll!_InternalCallWinProc@20()  + 0x23 bytes  
user32.dll!_UserCallDlgProcCheckWow@32()  - 0x19bc bytes    
user32.dll!_DefDlgProcWorker@20()  + 0x7f bytes 
user32.dll!_DefDlgProcA@16()  + 0x22 bytes  
user32.dll!_InternalCallWinProc@20()  + 0x23 bytes  
user32.dll!_UserCallWinProcCheckWow@32()  + 0xb3 bytes  
user32.dll!_SendMessageWorker@20()  + 0xd5 bytes    
user32.dll!_InternalCreateDialog@28()  + 0x700 bytes    
user32.dll!_InternalDialogBox@24()  + 0xa3 bytes    
user32.dll!_DialogBoxIndirectParamAorW@24()  + 0x36 bytes   
user32.dll!_DialogBoxParamA@20()  + 0x4c bytes  
logger.exe!ChooseSettings()  + 0x24 bytes   
logger.exe!InitLogexts()  + 0x84 bytes  
logger.exe!DebuggerLoop()  + 0x210 bytes    
logger.exe!_WinMain@16()  + 0x215 bytes 
logger.exe!__initterm_e()  + 0x1a1 bytes    
kernel32.dll!@BaseThreadInitThunk@12()  + 0x12 bytes    
ntdll.dll!___RtlUserThreadStart@8()  + 0x27 bytes   
ntdll.dll!__RtlUserThreadStart@8()  + 0x1b bytes

Anybody encountered this issue and know how to fix it?

Answer 1

I'm using 6.9.3.113 (April 29, 2008) of the debugging tools, and I don't get any problems on Vista. If I try running

logger notepad

it works OK (even as a non-admin). The first thing I would check is that if you're running the x64 version of Vista, you'll need to use the 64bit version of the debugging tools as well.