A Handling DBGHELP.DLL

To be able to debug a PE binary that has been compiled with Microsoft Visual Studio^*, the library DBGHELP.DLL must be available for Simics. Because of licensing reasons, DBGHELP.DLL cannot be distributed with Simics. When required, Simics will load DBGHELP.DLL from %simics%/win64/lib/DBGHELP.DLL. If this fails, DBGHELP.DLL will instead be loaded from the default installation directories of either Visual Studio or Windows Driver Kits:

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio [version]\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x64\dbghelp.dll
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\[version]\Debuggers\x64\dbghelp.dll

If DBGHELP.DLL could not be loaded, an Simics will log an error, and the user is required to perform these steps:

1. Quit Simics.

2. Find a 64-bit version of DBGHELP.DLL, or if not available, install either Visual Studio or download and install Windows Driver Kit from https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/windows-driver-kit

3. If DBGHELP.DLL cannot be automatically loaded by Simics, or if a specific version DBGHELP.DLL is needed, copy it to either to the Simics project or installation:

   • Simics project
     Do one of the following:

     • Create the directory [project]\win64\lib and copy DBGHELP.DLL to this directory.
     • From Simics CLI, use the command <tcf_agent>.copy-dbghelp.

   • Simics installation
     To do this administor permissions are required. Copy DBGHELP.DLL to:

     C:\Program Files\Simics\Simics 6\Simics 6.0\win64\lib

4. Restart Simics. Information about DBGHELP.DLL can be seen by running:
   <tcf_agent>.status.