I just re-installed gcc and gdb under Windows 7 Professional SP1. The downloads were these: mingw-w64-bin_i686-mingw_20111220.zip x86_64-w64-mingw32-gdb-7.1.90.20100730.zip I teach a course in which students compile C programs and examine the machine instructions they generate. I was testing the capability to generate and examine x86_64 code. The test program is rtsb.c. It reads a command line argument as a decimal or hex integer prints the bytes representing the argument and its address. gcc -m64 -g -c rtsb.c runs and generates rtsb.o gcc -m64 -g rtsb.c runs and generates a working executable file. objdump runs fine on either the object file or the executable. gdb needs to run on the executable file, not the object file, but I typed the following line in error (should have typed just gdb rtsb). gdb rtsb.o It creates the following output. GNU gdb (GDB) 7.1.90.20100730-cvs Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying" and "show warranty" for details. This GDB was configured as "x86_64-w64-mingw32". For bug reporting instructions, please see: <http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>... Reading symbols from C:\MinGW-w64\home\Tom\cs47prg/rtsb.o...BFD: BFD (GNU Binutils) 2.20.51.20100707 internal error, aborting at ../../gdb-cvs/bfd/reloc.c line 5720 in bfd_generic_get_relocated_section_contents BFD: Please report this bug. This is not an important problem for me. It happens only when I make a typo, but the error message asks for a bug report, so here it is.
Thanks. > GNU gdb (GDB) 7.1.90.20100730-cvs This is very old by now though. And, that build was based on a development snapshot, not a release. It's very likely this issue has been fixed meanwhile. Could you try a more up to date GDB?