Soft Ice

SoftIce is a kernel mode debugger from CompuWare for Windows NT/2000/9x.

http://www.compuware.com/products/devpartner/softice.htm

I think NuMega's SoftIce is a legendary product. For over 10 years, I have lusted over it. It is just amazing. It is sort of the Emacs of debuggers. It lets me go where no other debugger goes. Since it is a kernel mode debugger for Windows NT/2000/9x, I can go in and learn about these operating systems or debug Ring 0 Intel Kernel code that I couldn't get into anyway else. I have found it a life-saver for difficult problems. You don't need it often, but when you need it, you need it bad.

Sam created a page on MeatballWiki called SoftICE. After Compuware gobbled up NuMega, all the official SoftICE pages have been removed from the Internet. Now Google seems to think that MeatballWiki is the definitive source for SoftICE information. At one point, it was actually the number one page ranking for SoftICE. After deleting it twice, it has managed to slip down to second or third place. Hopefully, in a few months Google will get the hint, although it's unlikely because "Describe new page here." is still interesting to the Google bot. -- SunirShah (Sept 2002)

Meanwhile, Google lists the page here on WikiWiki in first place.

I loved SoftICE, cool product. Absolutely essential for developing VXDs in Win3.x. Too bad I don't write device drivers anymore.

Back in the bad old days when I was a game programmer, SoftIce was essential for developing DirectX games under Win9x. DirectX had a kernel-level mutex that got tickled whenever you dropped into a page flip (to protect DirectX drawing from GDI). If you happened to single-step (using a user-mode debugger) over a page flip without realizing it, the next step was the power switch (not even Ctrl-Alt-Delete). SoftIce acted as a loader for Win9x, though, so you could re-set your breakpoints in the OS while it was still rebooting. And reboot we did, usually 8 or 9 times a day. Hooray for Soft-Ice. -- TimLesher

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