Attaching to w3wp using mdbg

Question

I am trying to attach to the w3wp process using the command line managed debugger (mdbg). I am not able to see the process in the list of processes with the "a" command.

I am sure that the problem is that the w3wp process is running in another session under the LocalSystem account and cannot find any documentation on how to attach to those types of processes using mdbg.

Is it possible?

Answer 1

It turns out that I was running the w3wp process in 64 bit mode and running the mdbg process in 32-bit mode. I had a 32 bit powershell window open which obscured the fact that I was running in 32-bit mode.

As soon as I executed mdbg in 64-bit mode, w3wp showed up.

Answer 2

For users who are not Administrators in their own PCs, listing the active processes in a 64-bit mdbg may also not display any processes that your current user do not have access to. When this happens, try running mdbg as Administrator and the processes will be be displayed.