hello all,
Can anyone help me using "Backtrace" in Soft Ice? I have 2 questions:

1) Am I right in thinking that bactrace is used to record all the instructions that you step through, so that you can reviw them again later?

2) How do I use or turn backtrace on? I have increased the backtrace buffer size to 128 in winice.dat, but still don't seem able to use it. If I type: TRACE and enter in the command window, I get the message "Trace simulation is off". I have also tried typing the example from "help trace": TRACE 50, but I get the message: "Backtrace buffer is empty".
I just can't seem to get anywhere with it!

Any help greatly appreciated

xOptiMus

Hi xOptimus,

For a rundown on the command, check out
http://www.idca.com/~thesandman/si-ug-chapter09.txt

What I try to do is minimize the amount of code which will be traced, i.e. if you wanted to check how a MessageBox is called, trace as far along as you can manually, disable all BP's, then set a BPX MessageBoxA. Then you set the trace. I generally use 'BPRW taskname T', where taskname is the name of the Windows module. This will cover the whole of the module address range (usually 400000 onwards). Hit F5 and SI should break at MessageBox and the trace buffer will be filled with all the program code addresses encountered.

Then you can use the SHOW and TRACE commands. If your trace never gets to the MessageBoxA call, increase the buffer size, because the buffer is filled from the 1st instruction onwards and stops when filled, so it may have fell short. (Been a while since I've used it, but I think I got the command right)

Hope this helps,

Kayaker