c# crash dump does not exist

Question

Hi there,

I have a C# application which crashes sometimes for unknown reason. Therefore, I want to find the crash dump file but it does not exist. I also wrote a small application which provokes a DivideByZero exception (unhandled). The consequences of this: on the one system the program closes without any message, on the other system (VM) I get a simple crash report which wants to send data to Microsoft.

I configured drwtsn.exe and the registry settings. I also tried to use WinDbg without success.

Does anybody know how I can force the system to write dump files?

Best regards, el

Answer 1

ADPlus is the easiest way. Extensive documentation starts here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/286350

Answer 2

You'll need to write an event handler for the AppDomain.UnhandledException event. Logging the e.ExceptionObject.ToString() value is almost always good enough, the stack trace tells you how the code got into trouble.

P/Invoking MiniDumpWriteDump() from dbghelp.dll is possible too, you'd get a .dmp file that you could use to analyze the exception with WinDbug. Dbghelp.dll is available on Vista and Win7, you can get it from the Debugging Tools for Windows download for earlier versions. However, you can't get good managed stack traces from that minidump, not until VS2010 ships.