The invention provides an improved method for detecting concurrent bugs in multi-threaded software having at least one command to access a non-atomic variable. The non-atomic variable may have a plurality of memory words. In one approach, the method generally involves storing the memory words as atomic variables and replacing the at least one command to access the non-atomic variable with separate instructions to access each of the atomic variables. A thread-switch command is inserted between the atomic variable access commands to increase the likelihood of exposing and detecting synchronization problems.