How to attach WinDbg to a service?

There are various ways to do this.

1. Find the PID for process that is hosting the service. You can do this with the help of command,
   tasklist /svc

   Look for service and associated PID, then go to command prompt, into the directory where windbg is installed and give command,
   windbg.exe -p <ProcessID>

2. Another way is to directly use the service name as parameter to windbg. This is more convenient way, but hardly known to users/developers. You can use following command,

   windbg.exe -psn RPCSS

   Above command will find out the process which is hosting RPCSS process and then attach the debugger to that process.

Stay tuned..

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2007
  PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2007/10/27/how-to-attach-windbg-to-a-service/

• Anonymous
  November 07, 2007
  Here is a KB article that has few other options to attach windbg to a service. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824344