From Open Watcom

In Windows NT and later you can set the "Auto Execute Debugger". This is the debugger that can be called from the task manager as well as the one that is attached to a crashed process. This document describes how to configure The Watcom Debugger for Windows (wdw) to do this.

Contents 1 WARNING 2 Procedure 2.1 Modifying the registry 2.2 Testing 3 External Links

WARNING

This feature is buggy. A list of the bugs is below:

• Previous to vesion 1.6, the debugger would not attach to the process properly. You could not auctually debug the application, but closing the debuger would close the process it was attached to. In prerelease versions of 1.6 the debuger attaches to the process properly and you can trace, set break points, etc.
• In all versions of OpenWatcom, when you attach to a running process at startup, the debugger is no longer an MDI application and all the windows that normally appear inside the debugger appear as windows on the desktop. The cause of the bug is unknown and being worked on.

Procedure

Modifying the registry

The registry key that contains the debuging parameters is [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug]. You must modify this key as below.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug]
"Auto"="0"
"Debugger"="\"c:\\watcom\\binnt\\wdw.exe\" -p %ld -e %ld"
"UserDebuggerHotKey"=dword:0000000

Testing

1. Open up the IDE.
2. Open up the project in C:\watcom\samples\win\watzee\win32
3. Compile the project
4. open up a dos box and type cd C:\watcom\samples\win\watzee\win32
5. run watzee.exe
6. Hit CTRL+ALT+DEL to open up task manager.
7. Locate the instance of watzee.exe you opened and right click on it.
8. Select Debug.

The debugger is now opened.

External Links

This process was first described by Walter Briscoe in 2003.