Terminating a debugged process

[donkey]

Not really an assembler question but one that has an affect on my development cycle. I use Microsoft Virtual PC to emulate different platforms when testing software I write, I had been using Connectix Virtual PC but finally broke down and switched to the MS variety. The problem is that it appears less stable than Conenctix VPC Version 5, hanging occasionally when running Windows 98SE (this is the only OS in which I am experiencing the problem, NT4/Win95/WinXP are all fine). Now this is not a major issue as I can still run my tests which mostly consist of a check for invalid imports and some GUI functions that can react strangely using that particular OS (SetWindowPos etc...). My problem is that I cannot stop the process once it hangs since it is being debugged, question is how to stop a program that is being debugged and hopefully have it de-allocate memory and handles ? For now the only way I can get out is to try to shut down Windows but even that is hit and miss as it seems to have an effect on the shut down process and I sometimes have to hard reset my machine, that is very annoying as I have to run scandisk to make sure everything is alright when I restart, a VPC hang can therefore take up to 10 minutes to reset.

BTW yes, I have completely re-installed Win98SE on a new virtual machine and the problem persists, I believe that the actual root of the problem is somewhere in my firewall software though I hesitate to replace that.

[BogdanOntanu]

I am using VPC for a long time now... and I have never had such problems with it.

The only problem was when I wanted to tweak it a little by manipulating the stored saved images of OSes and this made the OS inside VPC ocasionally restart.

However VPC never locked my machine (I was using Win2k and/or WinXP Home)

[James Ladd]

I have been using VMware with great success and speed.
You can save a snapshot of the machine at anytime and use it elsewhere or retore to.

I also run WindowsXP in a virtual machine under linux. It's great.

[donkey]

I am using VPC for a long time now... and I have never had such problems with it.

The only problem was when I wanted to tweak it a little by manipulating the stored saved images of OSes and this made the OS inside VPC ocasionally restart.

However VPC never locked my machine (I was using Win2k and/or WinXP Home)

Hi Bogdan,

I believe that the problem exists in the firewall software which I am running, it comes with the internet account I set up when I moved and since it's free and actually pretty good I would prefer to keep it. The problem appears to be with the virtual network driver and hangs a module (freedom.exe) of the firewall as well. If all else fails I will have to revert to Kerio which is the only firewall I have tried that works perfectly with OllyDbg, VirtualPC and a host of other applications that seem to cough when I change firewalls. The firewall I am currently running is from zero-knowledge...

http://www.freedom.net/

No response from them when i emailed about my problem.

Donkey

[BogdanOntanu]

Well in order to check you could disable the network card in VPC and also disable the additional drivers that VPC adds to the OS network stack.

Well unless you need to access the internet from inside VPC.

I never leave the network activated inside a virtuall machine...
unless I am testing SOLAR OS network...