PRB: Debugger Cannot Debug DISPLAY.EXE

The information in this article applies to:

• The Visual Workbench Integrated Debugger included with: Microsoft Visual C++ for Windows, versions 1.0 and 1.5

SYMPTOMS

Attempts to run an application called DISPLAY.EXE in the Visual Workbench debugger or CodeView causes the debugger to generate the following error message:

     DEBUG ERROR: Could not load debuggee, Windows is
                  Out of memory (1)

CAUSE

There are several "Windows reserved" filenames that cause this behavior, such as the following:

   CGA40WOA.EXE   COMM.EXE       COMMDLG.EXE    GDI.EXE
   DISPLAY.EXE    DOSAPP.EXE     FIXFONTS.EXE   FONTS.EXE
   KERNEL.EXE     KEYBOARD.EXE   MMSYSTEM.EXE   MOUSE.EXE
   PROGMAN.EXE    SHELL.EXE      USER.EXE       TIMER.EXE

RESOLUTION

To work around this problem, rename the target executable with a name that does not match any of the names in the list above or any program that has already been loaded into memory. To find out whether an application in memory has the same name as your application, run the Heap Walker utility. Heap Walker has the ability to sort applications by module name, making it easy to see whether another application shares the same name as yours. If so, you cannot use the debugger to debug your application.