Debugging

Due to circumstances beyond our control , we've had to take up fixing someone else's code. The business rules are complex (which means the code must be so). There are no existing tests (this is a consequence of both the complex rules and a complex architecture , the latter could be simplified if it were not for the fact that the project is years late). Now the TDD guys are probably jumping up and down at this stage , pointing out that the lack of tests is the reason why everything is so complex , just ignore them , we'll get to these folks later. The bottom line is there are no tests, we are trying to create some regression tests, that will take time , meanwhile there are still bugs to be resolved. I was assigned one of them.
It took me 2 hours to setup the environment . Ones a weblogic portal domain and Ones a weblogic integration domain. The build for the portal takes about 30 minutes after which weblogic workshop duly crashes. I have to point my servers to a configuration other than their default which needs me to mess around manually. It takes another hour to understand what the defect is. it takes some more time to verify that the tester is indeed right, the system is doing something wrong. It takes some time to identify the areas of code that are possibly the cause. it takes a couple of hours to understand the nuances in the mostly undocumented code.
I then have to go and ask another dev, whether the testers expected results are correct, and it turns out they aren't. There is a defect and what the system currently does is wrong , but what should the system do is undocumented and unknown. We could make a guess but this impacts other systems so we need them to confirm. A meeting is scheduled.
The meeting lasts 2 hours. Some issues are resolved, Some new ones are raised. Some have to be followed up with other people. Armed with some more knowledge I look through the code. I get a sudden inspiration, I test out two scenarios , it looks like I'm right.

The defect is fixed by modifying all of two lines of code. Total time to fix defect ? 1.5 days.