Wow64: How to get the Progress Debugger to run in Vista 64-bit

Well, I just spent close to two days figuring out how to make the Progress Debugger to run in Windows Vista 64-bit.

When we first installed OpenEdge 10.0B on Vista, an error message popped up that the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Secure couldn’t be accessed. Since everything seemed to work OK, we didn’t pay much attention to it.

Until we tried to debug a program, and Progress informed us that we had to enable debugging. prodebugenable seems to do little more than change the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Secure\ProDbgCK\”C:\DLC100B” from “Debugging disabled” to “Debugging enabled”. A co-worker of mine, running Windows Vista 32-bit, simply pulled up the registry editor, and created the necessary keys.

When I did that in the 64-bit version, prodebugenable still complained it couldn’t access the registry key HKLM\Software\Secure. Suspecting a rights issue, I installed a utility called subinacl, that allows to read and change the rights on registry keys. However, this utility also couldn’t find the registry key… and it’s a 32-bit program. Hmm.

It turns out that Vista employs a virtualization of the registry for 32-bit programs. There is a node called HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node, under which 32-bit programs can create keys… it’s still a little black magic for me, but here are the steps I took to create the necessary keys and get the Progress Debugger to work:

1. Open a command shell, running as Administrator: find the cmd command, right-click on it, and select “Run as administrator”
2. Type the command
   reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node /v Secure
3. Type the command
   reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Secure /v ProDbgCK
4. Type the command
   reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Secure\ProDbgCK /v "C:\DLC100B.state" /d "Debugging disabled"
5. Verify the correctness of the keys by typing the command
   reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Secure\ProDbgCK
   It should show you the state key with the value “Debugging disabled”.
6. Now open the Proenv environment, also running as Administrator.
7. Type the command
   prodebugenable -enable-all
   You should get the confirmation that debugging is now enabled.

After these steps, you can start using the debugger. If these steps don’t work, I’d be interested in hearing from you.

One drawback: if you’re running Aero in Vista, activating the debugger switches the theme to Windows Classic. It doesn’t switch back automatically…

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