App Verifier Tutorial

Short Description
This tutorial will provide the basic knowledge to get started with App Verifier and … of PB 5.0 (Windows Mobile Version 5.0) the bits will be located in: …

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Content
App Verifier Tutorial
This tutorial will provide the basic knowledge to get started with App Verifier and use it on a variety of exes and DLLs. It is recommended that you read through the entire tutorial once to get an idea of the capabilities of App Verifier. You should then go back and decide on which methodologies are most applicable to you. It is recommended that you at least try to use App Verifier from the desktop, but use the command line for more advanced topics such as debugging device.exe.
Table of Contents
1. What is App Verifier?
2. Where is App Verifier located?
3. How to setup App Verifier on the Desktop
4. How to setup App Verifier on the Command Line
5. A simple test using App Verifier on the Desktop
6. A simple test using App Verifier from the command line
7. Investigating Leaks & False Positives
8. Debugging device.exe and DLLs loaded at boot up1. What is App Verifier?
App Verifier is a tool designed to exercise the stability of an application. In particular, it deals with memory and structure leaks. App Verifier works by using a special extension to the kernel called the shim engine. This engine enables specially written DLLs, known as shims, to be inserted on top of another DLL in the operating system. This allows the shim to intercept messages between the operating system and the DLL of interest.
While every shim may be structured similarly, each shim’s purpose and usage can vary. There are three default shims that come with App Verifier. They include the heap verifier shim (shim_heap.dll), the handle verifier (shim_hleak.dll), and GDI object shim (shim_usergdi.dll). While it is possible to create your own shim to monitor different types of leaks and situations, the process is beyond the scope of this document. We will focus mainly on the heap verifier shim.
2. Where is App Verifier located?
App Verifier will come pre-loaded with your installation of Platform builder. In the case of PB 5.0 (Windows Mobile Version 5.0) the bits will be located in:
C:Program…