How to see where an exception is caught?

Question

Hi.

An MFC, C++ application I'm working on seems to be throwing an exception deep inside a device driver. (It's an access violation writing to a NULL pointer from the looks of things. The details of the crash are not what is interesting me right now, however...)

I can get the Visual Studio Debugger to break when the exception occurs through the Exceptions dialog. What I would like to know though is where the exception is being caught. Visual Studio can pass the exception on to the program being debugged, but there doesn't seem to be anyway (that I know of) to single step to the next instruction so I can view the callstack from the exception handler's point of view.

Does anyone know whether it is possible to step to the exception handler that will catch the exception or not?

Cheers, James

Answer 1

At the point when the exception is being thrown you should have a call stack available to you in the debugger -- by looking at each stack frame from the point of the throw to main, you should be able to find the first frame with a try/catch block wrapping the call to the next routine in the frame. As long as that try/catch block handles the type of exception being thrown, that's where it'll land.