Quick Tips
- Don't get too caught up in "looking at everything". Think about what is going wrong and only then look for specific things, otherwise you can spend long hours "playing" in the debugger.
- Use the mouse. Even for non mouse users, using the debugger works very well with the mouse. You can use the mouse exclusively for nearly all debugging.
- Is the text in the windows too small. Remember than you can change the font and font size via the Display settings option in the Debug menu.
- Is the text in the dialog boxes too small. You can increase the size of fonts in the dialogs via the Large dialogs option in the Debug menu.
- Don't forget about the right click context menus. Nearly all debugger windows have context menus.
- Access violations. This are easy. Just run the program under the debugger. Let it crash. The debugger will stop the program at the point of the access violation. Now analyze the code where the violation occurred. Most times the bug is right there in front of you. If not, use the call trace to help determine how you got where you currently are and this will likely point you in the direction of the bug. Remember that the call trace can show you local variables of all active procedures in the trace.
- Language checking exceptions. Debug these like access violations.
- The debugger will stop on all raised exceptions. It could be that some exceptions are fully handled in your code. In these cases remember to use the Release trapped exception menu command.