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Environment:

  • Host: Win7 SP1 x64: VMWare Workstation 9.02, VirtualKD, IDA Pro 6.4.13 (x64) and WinDbg
  • Guest: Win7 SP1 x64

I have VirtualKD setup correctly in my guest and host. I say this because attaching WinDbg to the guest VM through VirtualKD works flawlessly.

But when I try to connect IDA Pro's WinDbg interface using instruction on this page, IDA keeps throwing the following error:

Windbg: using debugging tools from '<PATH>'
Connecting to debugger server with 'com:port=\\.\pipe\kd_Win7x64_SP1,pipe'
Connect failed: The server is currently disabled.

VirtualKD's vmmon is running on the host and shows the following:vmmon UI

UPDATE: Turns out, It's a problem with IDA 6.4. I happened to have IDA 6.3 installed on my machine too. That worked with no issues. Has anyone used IDA6.4 for live kernel debugging? Can someone please tell me how I can correct this issue in IDA 6.4?

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Lelouch Lamperouge
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1 Answers1

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I had the same problem at first when trying to connect IDAPro to windbg. What I did was the following:

  1. Manually edit the ida.cfg file located inside .\IDA 6.4\cfg\ directory.

  2. Change the DBGTOOLS path with WinDbg tools directory. For example, to:

    DBGTOOLS = "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Windows Kits\\8.0\\Debuggers\\x86\\";
perror
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gelodelrosario
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  • Just to add, it should be double backslashed, like in C programming. And make sure you selected Kernel Debugging in Debugger->Debug Options->Specific Debug Options – gelodelrosario Jul 10 '13 at 06:57
  • Also make sure that you have the 32-bit version of the debugger tools installed - the package is WinSDKDebugToolsRedist_x86 but MS won't install it when you install the debugging tools if you are on a 64-bit system. – cwd Jun 15 '15 at 05:11