Debugging a deployed application?

[SStewart]

I have a deployed application that is being reported as crashing with the
following dialogue box message:

----------------

MyApplicaton.exe - Common Language Runtime Debugging Services

Application has generated an exception that could not be handled.

Process id=0x240 (576), Thread id=0x2c0 (704).

Click OK to terminate the application.
Click CANCEL to debug the application.

-------------------

Whatever is causing this is NOT being duplicated in development or test
environments and is showing up randomly on user machines, with no
discernable pattern other than it happens perodically when saving data to
the database... but not all the time and not on all machines.

Does anyone have any ideas on the best way to approach getting to the root
of something like this?

 

[Jeremy Ames]

If it is possible to redistribute the application, you can set the build
type to debug which will give you more information when the application
crashes. Also you could put in some error handling that will throw back the
error message, number, and stack trace. I have found that the later part of
that helps a great deal when trying to find odd problems.

I have a deployed application that is being reported as crashing with the
following dialogue box message:

----------------

MyApplicaton.exe - Common Language Runtime Debugging Services

Application has generated an exception that could not be handled.

Process id=0x240 (576), Thread id=0x2c0 (704).

Click OK to terminate the application.
Click CANCEL to debug the application.

-------------------

Whatever is causing this is NOT being duplicated in development or test
environments and is showing up randomly on user machines, with no
discernable pattern other than it happens perodically when saving data to
the database... but not all the time and not on all machines.

Does anyone have any ideas on the best way to approach getting to the root
of something like this?

 

[Manoj Mathew]

Normally a release version of the application is compiled in Release
mode which really does not generate any symbol tables for debugging in
the dll's and the exe's. In such scenarios, the best way is to enable
write to a log file through some command line switches or program
logics.

The .NET library provides a vast number of API's which support this
functionality.

Hope this helps..

Manoj Mathew
http://www.sigmainfo.net