What is exactly difference between NTSD and WinDbg?

Question

I am bit confused about Windows Debugging Tools.

WinDbg Tutorial

Windbg – wraps KD and NTSD with a decent UI. WinDbg can function both as a kernel-mode and user-mode debugger.

Does that mean whatever commands I use in NTSD can be used in WinDbg? Whenever I do user mode debugging NTSD is actually working behind the scenes?

Monteverdi

Answer 1

WinDbg, NTSD, CDB, and KD all share the same debugging engine, so they share all the same commands. The only differences between them is that WinDbg has GUI interface, NTSD, CDB and KD have console interfaces, NTSD and CDB only support user mode debugging, KD only supports kernel mode, while WinDbg supports both.

Note that the NTSD command installed in the System32 directory on older versions of Windows will likely be a much older version of the debugger than any version of WinDbg you might have installed on the machine. In that case the old and new debuggers will have differences in the commands they support.

Glaucous