Comments on: Setting a Visual Studio breakpoint on a Win32 API function in user32.dll

By: Richie Hindle

Richie Hindle — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:41:15 +0000

@Mehdi: I’m sure that would work, but it requires you to change your source code. Just adding “NtUser” to the name is much easier if it works – if it doesn’t, your method would be very useful!

By: Mehdi

Mehdi — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:25:25 +0000

Why dont take the function adress directly: declare a pointer to the api function where you want to put the breakpoint, in this case:

BOOL (*ptFunction)(HWND) = ::LockWindowUpdate ;

then debug your program, in the watch take the value of ptFunction and add it in the “Break at Function” dialog

By: Innes

Innes — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:49:46 +0000

…and I got it working.

I guess I should have read the words ‘native only’ on the MS page, and actually paid attention!

By: Innes

Innes — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:19:08 +0000

I want to do this kind of thing at the moment. When reading about the facility, I immediately thought “I’ll be amazed if this works”, and sure enough it doesn’t. I tried your ‘SendMessage’ breakpoint but no dice. I wonder what I could be doing wrong. The MS page on this is of course not much use: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d16ayc6z.aspx

By: Richie Hindle

Richie Hindle — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:56:50 +0000

@Asher: You type the expression into the New Breakpoint dialog, not the Watch window.

By: Asher

Asher — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:13:18 +0000

I don’t know how these expressions work.

When I type {,,user32.dll}_SendMessageA@16 into the watch window, I get the error “CXX0036: Error: bad context {…} specification”