Visual C++: Invalid allocation size. How to force the debugger to stop on this message?

The MFC program I am debugging is printing this message in the "Output" window in Visual Studio 9.0:

HEAP[AppName.exe]: Invalid allocation size - 99999998 (exceeded 7ffdefff)

I'm pretty sure this is due to a bad "new", uninitialized variable or similar error.

The question is: how do I get the d开发者_StackOverflow中文版ebugger to stop on this message so that I can view the stack trace and solve the problem?

Edit: The following snippets do not yield the same warning. They produce the Invalid allocation size: 4294967295 bytes. style message instead.

int stupid = -1;
char *bob = new char[stupid];

And:

malloc(-1);

So, I suspect it's coming from within a system DLL with its own memory management or is using a different API.

The error message is probably coming from HeapAlloc() in ntdll.dll.

I can reproduce the message with the following code:

HANDLE hHeap = HeapCreate(0, 0, 4096);
LPVOID p = HeapAlloc(hHeap, 0, 0x99999998);

The message gets sent to the debugger output window by DbgPrint() in ntdll.dll, so I would try setting a breakpoint there (it's an exported function, so you won't need a symbol file to find its address) and then looking at your call stack.

That error message is printed at line 409 of dbgheap.c which is in Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\crt\src. You should be able to just set a breakpoint there.

Try this:

In the menu bar, go to Debug -> Exceptions. Add a C++-Exception called std::bad_alloc and check the checkbox Thrown to stop where the exception was thrown.

Do you know where that function is, or what it's called? Grep the runtime sources for the strings in the error message. Try setting a breakpoint on function call or file/location, in the Debug->New breakpoint dialog.

If that doesn't work, you can break out the big gun (but this is painful and time-consuming) and modify the file where the function is implemented (if it's in a header - if it's in a .cpp file it's even more work). Add this:

__asm {
    int 3;
}

to manually insert a 'break into debugger' opcode. This is a trick I often use to force a breakpoint in a dll for which the debugger fails to identify a location for a breakpoint correctly.