WinDbg
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 9 debuggers by recommenders
People recommend it as a powerful debugger for Windows code, with deep analysis and time travel debugging, though critics find its GUI awful and hard to discover.
People recommend it as a powerful debugger for Windows code, with deep analysis and time travel debugging, though critics find its GUI awful and hard to discover.
17 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 82%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Advanced debugging power for Windows
“If you haven't programmed in Visual Studio or used WinDbg then you have not used a serious, high-end debugger.”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “RemoveWindowsAI” “But windbg is still the king here, for the most advanced analysis of both managed and unmanaged code”
Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “DLL that was not present in memory despite not being formally unloaded” “Windows tooling blows the competition out of the water in actually advanced developer experience”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent” - Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Let's compile Quake like it's 1997”
Time travel and record-replay debugging
“Linux hasn't yet got anything remotely close to PDB symbol servers and WinDbg's record-replay debugging.”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent” “WinDbg, ProcDump, Windows Performance Analyzer, ttd, graphics debuggers etc”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Prediction: Microsoft Is Going to Do the Funniest Thing Imaginable” “windbg xperf driver verifier time travel debugging”
Comment from 30 Jul 2026 in “Hooray for the Sockets Interface” Strong Windows developer tooling
“Windows tooling blows the competition out of the water in actually advanced developer experience”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent” “as a dev there are things I really like (ETW + WinDbg immediately come to mind)”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “The beauty and terror of modding Windows” “WinDbg, ProcDump, Windows Performance Analyzer, ttd, graphics debuggers etc”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Prediction: Microsoft Is Going to Do the Funniest Thing Imaginable” Well-made tool Microsoft put effort into
“If you made a list of Microsoft bangers it's in the top 5 with probably windbg”
Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Let's compile Quake like it's 1997” “I think it's fair to say they really put some effort in it”
Comment from 23 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: I built a post-mortem debugger for native Windows x64/x86 crashes”
Other debuggers people recommend
The four most recommended other debuggers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GDB (GNU Debugger) | 29 | 16 | 64% | 10 | — | — |
| WinDbgThis page | 14 | 3 | 82% | 7 | — | Approved |
| HyperProbe | 12 | 1 | 92% | 1 | — | — |
| RenderDoc | 10 | 1 | 91% | 4 | — | Approved |
| RAD Debugger | 7 | 1 | 88% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
17 of the 21 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“maybe "arcane" would have been a better word to describe WinDbg - you can do just about anything, provided you know the right incantation”
“I think it's fair to say they really put some effort in it”
“WinDbg has the same stale-cache trap on live Windows targets.”
“windbg xperf driver verifier time travel debugging”
“Windows tooling blows the competition out of the water in actually advanced developer experience”
“Linux hasn't yet got anything remotely close to PDB symbol servers and WinDbg's record-replay debugging.”
“But windbg is still the king here, for the most advanced analysis of both managed and unmanaged code”
“windbg absolutely can patch currently running programs. It does all the things you think it can't do.”
“Its assembler is sadly stuck in the pre-x86_64 era (and refuses to do arm at all), however it disassembles all of those fine.”
“If you made a list of Microsoft bangers it's in the top 5 with probably windbg”
“WinDbg has some slick commands for super niche cases. Awful GUI with no discoverability though.”
“Nobody thinks that it is "great," you must be kidding.”
“on special occassion WinDbg, is great”
“as a dev there are things I really like (ETW + WinDbg immediately come to mind)”
“The way it is implemented in Sibelius, WinDBG or PDFXChange is very bad.”
“WinDbg, ProcDump, Windows Performance Analyzer, ttd, graphics debuggers etc”
“If you haven't programmed in Visual Studio or used WinDbg then you have not used a serious, high-end debugger.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.