I have been doing break-fix for Windows, *nix, and Mac systems for a long time. I have worshipped at the altar of Russinovich and Sysinternals gods for as long. I have wanted to be able to sit with Process Explorer, Process Monitor, and Windbg and know everything that goes wrong with a system from weird driver buginess to Word crash for reasons ignortant users can show me happening once a week but I cannot find evidence. I know the basics, but I really want to go up to the advanced levels with this. After years, Windows is still a black box to me, more than it should be after reading more than basic material, and that upsets me.
I see two problems here:
1) Where is good comprehensive material on the topic?
I see pages like this, but no unified material and training. On the Sysinternals book, I caved and bought the Bible, Sysinternals v6 back when it was current. I routinely show it for geek cred to other IT friends; few even know it exists. I met some more advanced consultants a month ago and learned of the Aaron Margosis companion (https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Sysinternals-Administrators-R...). But for the advanced stuff for WinDbg I know there are tier 2 customer engineers who know stuff inside out who post blogs like this, but find no really thorough books/material/courses I would gladly pay for to learn the basics of this skillset. Advice? Suggestions? I wish Julia Evans (jvns.ca) counterpart exists for the beauty of Windows debugging tools, but I have not found her/him/it yet.
2) Does tooling exist beyond the Sysinternals and debuggers I keep missing because I am uninformed? Help!?
On the point of Julia Evans, tooling in Windows is good, but I have not found much beyond the blessed debuggers and the gap between these debuggers+Sysinternals stack and that of the raw power tools of the Unix landscape of late: dtrace, strace, ltrace which go into crazy levels of introspection. I looked after reading this and stumbled upon maybe Dr. Memory but have not had time to learn it. Do you have counterpoints or suggestions?
Again, I would love to learn fu like Julia Evans in the Unix space and begin a love affair with the Windows side of debugging tools, but the landscape is more confusing. I would seriously love to hear from you.
Thanks so much for pointing us to DebugDiag. I have never found this and I am checking it out now. Very exciting!
UPDATE: I am reading the Code Machine posts listed in another comment, but it seems that Advanced Windows Debugging book might be the start of what I am looking for. Would love to know if you have other suggestions.
I have been doing break-fix for Windows, *nix, and Mac systems for a long time. I have worshipped at the altar of Russinovich and Sysinternals gods for as long. I have wanted to be able to sit with Process Explorer, Process Monitor, and Windbg and know everything that goes wrong with a system from weird driver buginess to Word crash for reasons ignortant users can show me happening once a week but I cannot find evidence. I know the basics, but I really want to go up to the advanced levels with this. After years, Windows is still a black box to me, more than it should be after reading more than basic material, and that upsets me.
I see two problems here:
1) Where is good comprehensive material on the topic?
I see pages like this, but no unified material and training. On the Sysinternals book, I caved and bought the Bible, Sysinternals v6 back when it was current. I routinely show it for geek cred to other IT friends; few even know it exists. I met some more advanced consultants a month ago and learned of the Aaron Margosis companion (https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Sysinternals-Administrators-R...). But for the advanced stuff for WinDbg I know there are tier 2 customer engineers who know stuff inside out who post blogs like this, but find no really thorough books/material/courses I would gladly pay for to learn the basics of this skillset. Advice? Suggestions? I wish Julia Evans (jvns.ca) counterpart exists for the beauty of Windows debugging tools, but I have not found her/him/it yet.
2) Does tooling exist beyond the Sysinternals and debuggers I keep missing because I am uninformed? Help!?
On the point of Julia Evans, tooling in Windows is good, but I have not found much beyond the blessed debuggers and the gap between these debuggers+Sysinternals stack and that of the raw power tools of the Unix landscape of late: dtrace, strace, ltrace which go into crazy levels of introspection. I looked after reading this and stumbled upon maybe Dr. Memory but have not had time to learn it. Do you have counterpoints or suggestions?
Again, I would love to learn fu like Julia Evans in the Unix space and begin a love affair with the Windows side of debugging tools, but the landscape is more confusing. I would seriously love to hear from you.
Thanks so much for pointing us to DebugDiag. I have never found this and I am checking it out now. Very exciting!
UPDATE: I am reading the Code Machine posts listed in another comment, but it seems that Advanced Windows Debugging book might be the start of what I am looking for. Would love to know if you have other suggestions.