Visual Studio Debugger. The Visual Studio Debugger is part of the Visual Studio 2008 IDE. Most Windows developers have some experience with this tool from product development. Lightweight debugging usually starts with the Visual Studio Debugger.

Managed Debugger (MDbg). This tool is a console debugger dedicated to managed debugging. It has a variety of commands and options that are specific to managed code. You can download the MDbg project from the Microsoft download Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads). There is a graphic user interface (GUI) extension available for MDbg that also can be downloaded. It provides a user-friendly veneer to MDbg.

CLR Debugger (DbgClr). DbgClr is another dedicated managed debugger and an abbreviated version of the Visual Studio Debugger. It has the familiar Visual Studio interface, but it supports only the debugging features. This tool is distributed with the .NET Framework. DbgClr is particularly useful on production machines where Visual Studio might not be installed but the .NET Framework is present. DbgClr is limited in some ways and does not support remote or mixed-mode debugging.

Performance Monitor. The Performance Monitor portion of the Reliability and Performance Monitor instruments a live application. It can plot a host of data points onto a variety of graphs and reports. Results also can be stored in log files for later examination. The complete tool is distributed with the Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems.

Windows Console Debugger (CDB). CDB is both a kernel- and user-mode debugger. Download CDB from the Debugging Tools for Windows Web site. For managed debugging capabilities, load the SOS debugger extension (SOS.dll) into CDB.

Windows Debugger (WinDbg). Like CDB, WinDbg is a kernel-mode and user-mode debugger. This tool provides a user interface to CDB. For this reason, the commands of CDB and WinDbg are the same. WinDbg is a native debugger. To debug managed applications, load Son of Strike (SOS.dll) into WinDbg. You can download WinDbg from the Debugging Tools for Windows Web site.

ADPlus (ADPlus.vbs). This text file is a Visual Basic script that automates common CDB tasks, such as creating dumps. This is another tool that can be downloaded at the Debugging Tools for Windows Web site.

Son of Strike (SOS.dll). SOS.dll is a debugging extension that has commands for debugging managed applications. This tool is distributed with the .NET Framework and is downloadable from the Debugging Tools for Windows Web site. Installing Visual Studio or the .NET Framework also installs SOS.dll. Therefore, there might be multiple SOS.dll files on your machine. Download the most recent version from the Debugging Tool for Windows Web site.