CodeView Does Not Support Debugging Spawned Process (58653)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft CodeView for MS-DOS 2.2
  • Microsoft CodeView for MS-DOS 3.0
  • Microsoft CodeView for MS-DOS 3.11
  • Microsoft CodeView for MS-DOS 3.14
  • Microsoft CodeView for MS-DOS 4.0
  • Microsoft CodeView for MS-DOS 4.01
  • Microsoft CodeView for MS-DOS 4.05
  • Microsoft CodeView for MS-DOS 4.1
This article was previously published under Q58653
The following are several reasons why CodeView doesn't provide debugging support for spawned processes in MS-DOS:

  1. MS-DOS is not a multitasking operating system. CodeView cannot start another thread/process to watch the execution of the spawned process.
  2. MS-DOS does not provide debugging support for the MS-DOS BIOS calls (Interrupt 21h). Since all spawn() and exec() functions in MS-DOS must go through the BIOS to run, CodeView cannot follow the spawned program.
  3. MS-DOS only recognizes 640K of memory; therefore, there is insufficient memory to debug a large program, since both the parent and child processes must reside in memory at the same time.
Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:9/30/2003
Keywords:kb16bitonly KB58653
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