Can I use windbg as a post mortem debugger for Windows services?

Question

I have Windbg set as the default post mortem debugger. I did this by running windbg -I. However, this only appears to catch unhandled exceptions from applications run by the user I'm logged on as, not Windows services. Does anyone know how I can configure windbg to catch these too?

Answer 1

If you plan to debug the service application from the beginning of its execution, including its initialization code, this preparatory step is required. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff553427(v=vs.85).aspx

Answer 2

When WinDbg is running as postmortem debugger it is launched by the process that is crashing. In case of a service it is launched by a process running in session 0 and has no access to the desktop.

You can configure AeDebug registry to launch a process that creates a crash dump and debug the crash dump. You can use ntsd -server and connect to the server.

Answer 3

You should be able to use WinDbg to attach or launch any service even those not run by the user: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824344