Windbg as JIT debugger versus Vista UAC

[Gerard O'Brien]

Are there any magic switches that can be flipped so that windbg will
function as the Just In Time debugger on a Vista Enterprise system with
User Account Control enabled?

When UAC is enabled the attempt to initiate windbg as the JIT debugger
fails. I see the following after selecting the debug option (AeDebug
'Auto' being zero):

Breakpoint 1 hit
eax=00000000 ebx=00000000 ecx=7efdb000 edx=00000000 esi=00000001
edi=00000000
eip=7380b2b0 esp=001be388 ebp=001be7ac iopl=0 nv up ei pl nz na
po nc
cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b
efl=00000202
faultrep!WerpLaunchAeDebug+0x37f:
7380b2b0 e8e3f3ffff call faultrep!CreateProcessW (7380a698)
0:000> p
ModLoad: 74f40000 74f6c000 C:\Windows\SysWOW64\apphelp.dll
ModLoad: 02840000 028d3000 windbg.exe
eax=00000000 ebx=00000000 ecx=769de9dd edx=00000049 esi=00000001
edi=00000000
eip=7380b2b5 esp=001be3b0 ebp=001be7ac iopl=0 nv up ei pl zr na
pe nc
cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b
efl=00000246
faultrep!WerpLaunchAeDebug+0x384:
7380b2b5 85c0 test eax,eax
0:000> p
eax=00000000 ebx=00000000 ecx=769de9dd edx=00000049 esi=00000001
edi=00000000
eip=7380b2b7 esp=001be3b0 ebp=001be7ac iopl=0 nv up ei pl zr na
pe nc
cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b
efl=00000246
faultrep!WerpLaunchAeDebug+0x386:
7380b2b7 744d je faultrep!WerpLaunchAeDebug+0x3d5
(7380b306) [br=1]
0:000> !gle
LastErrorValue: (Win32) 0x2e4 (740) - The requested operation requires
elevation.
LastStatusValue: (NTSTATUS) 0xc000042c - The requested operation
requires elevation.

When UAC is disabled it is fine.

As an aside, Vista machines that have Visual Studio 2005 installed and
configured for native debugging use VSJitDebugger.exe in the
windows\system32 directory as the JIT debugger and that works fine
regardless of the UAC setting, successfully initiating the selected
Visual Studio debugger.

Is there something that can be done to get windbg working in this
environment or is it the case that such JIT debuggers are not supported
on Vista when UAC is enabled.

Thanks
Gerard

[Gerard O'Brien]

Resolved. I located a shortcut for windbg that had 'Run this program as
an administrator' set on the compatibility tab. Once this was no longer
set windbg behaved as expected.
cheers
Gerard.