Re: Finding out where a crash occurred

From:

Scot T Brennecke <ScotB@Spamhater.MVPs.org>

Newsgroups:

microsoft.public.vc.language

Date:

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:51:45 -0500

Message-ID:

<OwaCqtwEKHA.1340@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl>

Stanza wrote:

I'm developing on Vista, and my program may dynamically load DLLs from
other suppliers, so to a degree it will be at the mercy of bugs in other
people's code.

If a user reports a crash, I need to be able to find out whether the
problem is in MY code or in one of those DLLs.

If I create a DEBUG build then the stack trace in the IDE will tell me
where a crash occured - that's IF I can reproduce the user's reported
crash.

But when the RELEASE version is run on Vista, and a crash occurs all
that appears on the screen is a message box that says that "MYPROG has
stopped working" and a CLOSE button. There doesn't seem to be any
information about the crash at all - not even an address.

Does Windows XP give any more information when a program crashes?

So if my program crashes on someone else's PC how do I get the necessary
information to find out roughly where the crash happened - particularly
whether it was in my own code or one of the DLLs?

Alternatively, you can install (on the customer's machine) the Debugging Tools for Windows package:
Debugging Tools for Windows - Overview:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx

Once installed, you can use the ADPlus script to generate a crash dump when the program throws an exception. For instance, you
could start a command window from the folder where the tools are installed with:
cscript adplus.vbs -crash -quiet -pn <yourprogname> -o: <some path to a folder for the dump>

Then, using the WinDbg debugger (also part of the tools you installed), you can open the dump file and examine it for details about
the location of the crash. You can start with the command "!analyze -v"