Tools/techniques for diagnosing C app crash on Windows

Question

I have written an application in C, which runs as a Windows service. Most users can run the app without any problems, but a significant minority experience crashes caused by an Access Violation, so I know I have a bug somewhere. I have tried setting up virtual machines to mirror the users' configurations as closely as possible, but cannot reproduce the issue.

My background is in Java - when a Java app crashes it will produce a stack trace showing exactly where the problem occurred, but native applications aren't so helpful. What techniques are normally used by C developers for tracking down this type of problem? I have no physical access to the users' machines that experience the crash, but I could send then additional tools to install, to capture information. I also have Windows error reports showing Exception Code/Offset etc but these don't mean much to me. I have compiled my application using gcc - are there some compiler options I can use to generate more information in the event of a crash?

Answer 1

On most modern operating systems your app can install a crash handler that'll walk the stack(s) in the event of a crash. I have no experience doing this on Windows, but this article walks through how to do it.

Answer 2

You could try asking the users to run ProcDump to capture a core dump when the program crashes. Unlike using something like Visual Studio it's a single, simple command-line utility so there should be no problem getting the users to run it.