Red Gate forums: Memory tracker

RE: Unable to attach to the selected process

Redgie — Thu, 05 May 2011 14:22:38 GMT

mariaparacha20 wrote:

I'm also getting this error and I did install all the required Windows Debugging tools. I have WinXP SP2 and installed the Windows Symbols for XP SP2 as well as the debugging tools version 6.9.3.113.

I'm trying to track the memory of a .NET 2005 application. I've tried to attach to the debug as well as the release version and I've also run the app from within VS.NET 2005 and attach to the exe that way. No luck.

Any ideas what else could be missing or wrong?

Update your Windows Installer to version 1.1 before installing the debugging tools, maybe you have luck with this. If you are running Windows 2000 or a later version of Windows, then you already have Windows Installer 1.1 or a later version, and there is no need to reinstall it.

RE: Unable to attach to the selected process

mariaparacha20 — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 11:31:27 GMT

RE: Can't see all processes

Brian Donahue — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:56:23 GMT

It looks like Windows Vista and up will only let you choose the user processes.

RE: Can't see all processes

bluegate — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 03:31:24 GMT

I too have run into this. Perhaps there is something we need to click in order to uncover the entire picture? Help?

Can't see all processes

aultmike — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:14:03 GMT

Hi I'm new to Memory Tracker and when I opened the drop down it didnt show me all the processes for all users... I'm an administrator on the box.

What can I do so that I can see and ultimately investigate all the processes?

Thanks! Looking forward to using this tool!

RE: Unable to attach to the selected process

RobBrooks — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:48:09 GMT

I'm running Windows 7 and I've just installed the Debugging Tools for Windows and searched for the Registry Keys Pete mentions and I can't find them anywhere.

More info - I downloaded the Microsoft Windows Driver Kit 7.1.0.7600 and *only* checkmarked 'Debugging Tools for Windows'.

Should I have perhaps installed everything?

Like previous posters, I'm currently unable to attach to any process running on this PC with Memory Tracker, although I can attach using windbg.exe

RE: Unable to attach to the selected process

Chris.Allen — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:06:05 GMT

Brilliant Pete - that certainly helped me!

RE: Unable to attach to the selected process

pcox101 — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:08:34 GMT

Hi,

I have done some more investigation and it looks like the tool requires the following registry key/values:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\DebuggingTools
. Debugging Help - REG_EXPAND_SZ
. Global Flags - REG_EXPAND_SZ
. Release notes - REG_SZ
. WinDbg - REG_EXPAND_SZ

Set the Debugging Help, Global Flags and WinDbg values to the install folder of debugging tools for windows, "c:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows (x86)\" on my system, and leave the Release notes one empty.

Then on my system the memory tracker could actually connect.

It looks like those keys were removed from the Debugging Tools for Windows in later versions.

Hope that helps anyone who wants to use this tool!

Cheers

Pete

RE: Unable to attach to the selected process

pcox101 — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:00:43 GMT

Hi,

No, I don't think that's it. The screenshot on the download page has it showing the memory of explorer.exe which I'm pretty sure is unmanaged. Plus the application I'm trying to connect to is partially managed and I've tried it with unmanaged code (reflector) and it doesn't work either.

The thing is I can connect to processes fine using windbg, so I don't think its the debugger.

Maybe the version of the debugging tools for windows is important? I tried to reflect the assemblies but they've been obfuscated (rather obviously) so I can't even help myself to diagnose.

I suspect that the "unable to attach" error is a generic catch all. If there was a bit more information about why it was unable to connect, that would be helpful!

Thanks

Pete

RE: Unable to attach to the selected process

Brian Donahue — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:00:47 GMT

Hi Pete,

I'm not sure where to look for diagnostics. Just about any process should allow you to attach a debugger. Maybe memory tracker doesn't allow you to connect to unmanaged processes as it's primarily meant for .NET?

RE: Unable to attach to the selected process

pcox101 — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:10:22 GMT

Hi,

The memory tracker tool seemed like just what I needed to analyze the memory usage of a process, but I am getting the "unable to connect to the selected process" error while connecting to any process.

I have installed version 6.11.1.404 of the Debugging Tools for Windows. Windbg fires up fine, but I just don't seem to be able to connect to any process running with the memory tracker.

This is on a Windows Server 2003 machine.

Any ideas? Anything I can do to provide some diagnostics?

Thanks

Pete

RE: Unable to run Memory Tracker

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:09:37 GMT

thanx 4 the information
Brian Donahue

64-bit Windows 2008 support

hdubnow — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:13:02 GMT

I'm running a 64-bit Windows 2008 machine running .NET 3.5 (I know, not exactly the system requirements). I was hoping that WOW would allow me to use the tool on processes running 64-bit applications as long as they stayed within 2GB of virtual address space. I brought up my application within a windows console and tried the memory tracker both as a regular user and as administrator, but alas in either case only the memory tracker process shows up in the process list box -- the process I was hoping to monitor was not in the list.

Is there something else I need to do to enable the memory tracker, or is it an OS and/or 64-bit and/or .NET incompatibility? If it is an incompatibility with my environment, I understand the memory tracker is unsupported, but is there any way I can get a version that might work for me? Or, perhaps, is there an upcoming tool that might provide this functionality?

Thanks in advance for your time!

RE: Unable to attach to the selected process

Brian Donahue — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:57:13 GMT

It's not because of the "illegal characters in path" issue, is it?

RE: Unable to attach to the selected process

jmehta_cinci — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:42:28 GMT

I've got Debugging Tools for Windows installed. I tried attaching to the w3wp.exe process, and it couldn't.