Debug Crash Dumps don't work on XP SP2

[George Nentidis]

Hi there all,
Usually on WinXP I install DrWatson32 to my customers so that I can get
crash dumps
of my applications. Crash dumps work on all situations except for any errors
that have
to do with the stack. In that case, the application disappears with no crash
dump.
Since I installed SP2, EVERY application crash behaves like that. The
application
just desappears with no crash dump whatsoever.
Null pointer assignments, devisions by zero, everything. I haven't been able
to get
a single crash dump since I installed SP2.
I have tested this in 5 different XP installations here in our developing
team and works
exactly the same way.
I think that this has to do with exception handling. A null pointer
assignment would cause
the application to crash with an unhandled exception. DrWatson captures this
unhandled
exception to produce the dump. This unhandled exception does not happen any
more in SP2.
The application just disappears.
I also have library of my own that uses the SetUnhandledExceptionFilter call
to capture
unhandled exception and produce a crash dump, but this does not work also...

Does any one konw if there has been any change here?
Thank you in advance for your time.

George Nentidis

 

[Joshua Smith [MSFT]]

Hi George,

There should have been no change in SP2 for crash dump behavior. You can
look at this key to ensure on your systems it still points to the debugger
of your choice:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug\Debugger

It should be set to whatever debugger you want to invoke on a crash. I use
the inbox debugger NTSD so my entry says -> NTSD -p %ld -e %ld -g

Let me know if this doesn't help.


Joshua Smith
DirectInput and OpenGL Test Labs
Microsoft