Finding the crash dump files for a C# app

Question

An app I'm writing always crashes on a clients computer, but I don't get an exception description, or a stack trace. The only thing I get is a crash report that windows wants to send to Microsoft. I would like to get that dump file and investigate it myself, but I cannot find it.

When I "View the contents of the error report" I can see the different memory dumps, but I cannot copy it or save it.

Thanks, Mats

Answer 1

You can use the Windows debugging tools to view the crash dump. To get the most use out of it, you'll need an exact copy of the symbols for that application (i.e. same version).

Have a look at Tess's blog for tutorials on how to use the Windows debugging tools. I refer to her blog constantly whenever I'm in need of analysing crash dumps.

Answer 2

Tess' blog was a great resource. Eventually I managed to figure out how to do remote debugging which means I didn't have to look at the crash dump.

For the general community, here are some links I found useful:

• Remote debugging, how to set up and run it.
• Crash dumps, how to save and debug them.