Error reporting choice before closing unresponsive program?

[Patok]

There probably isn't any such thing (none I could find) but it doesn't hurt
to ask.

Is there a way to choose whether to report the hanging program *before*
closing it? The way it is currently implemented, the system says that "You've
chosen to end the unresponsive program" and the options are yes and no. If you
decide to end it, then, after the fact, the error reporting behavior happens the
way you have configured it. However, in most cases (in my case), I know at that
time if I want to send a report or not (most often not, as I know what causes it
to hang, and reporting won't fix it). It would be very nice if the dialog had
*three* options - end and report, end but don't report, and cancel.

Is there an add-on, or tweak, that makes this possible? It doesn't have to be
exactly the way I describe it; just the same functionality.

 

[Mint]

   There probably isn't any such thing (none I could find) but it doesn't hurt
to ask.

   Is there a way to choose whether to report the hanging program *before*
closing it? The way it is currently implemented, the system says that "You've
chosen to end the unresponsive program" and the options are yes and no. If you
decide to end it, then, after the fact, the error reporting behavior happens the
way you have configured it. However, in most cases (in my case), I know at that
time if I want to send a report or not (most often not, as I know what causes it
to hang, and reporting won't fix it). It would be very nice if the dialoghad
*three* options - end and report, end but don't report, and cancel.

   Is there an add-on, or tweak, that makes this possible? It doesn'thave to be
exactly the way I describe it; just the same functionality.

The built in debugger should be handling hang-ups and there will be an
entry in your Event Viewer.

Andy

 

[Johnw]

Patok explained on 13/02/2011 :

There probably isn't any such thing (none I could find) but it doesn't
hurt to ask.

Is there a way to choose whether to report the hanging program *before*
closing it? The way it is currently implemented, the system says that "You've
chosen to end the unresponsive program" and the options are yes and no. If
you decide to end it, then, after the fact, the error reporting behavior
happens the way you have configured it. However, in most cases (in my case),
I know at that time if I want to send a report or not (most often not, as I
know what causes it to hang, and reporting won't fix it). It would be very
nice if the dialog had *three* options - end and report, end but don't
report, and cancel.

Is there an add-on, or tweak, that makes this possible? It doesn't have to
be exactly the way I describe it; just the same functionality.

Here are some programs that may take over from Task Manager & offer the
options you want.

Many other ways in this.
How to Quickly Shut Down a Hung or Unresponsive Application ( 2 pages )
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-quickly-shut-down-hung-or-unresponsive-application.htm

KillProcess
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Launchers-Shutdown-Tools/KillProcess.shtml
http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/KillProcess-Screenshot-35767.html
http://orangelampsoftware.com/products_killprocess.php

DTaskManager
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/DTaskManager.shtml
http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/DTaskManager-Screenshot-34426.html
http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/

ServiWin
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/ServiWin.shtml
http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/ServiWin-Screenshot-15759.html
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/serviwin.html

ProcRecon
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/System-Tweak/ProcRecon.shtml
http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/ProcRecon-Screenshot-1322.html
http://www.freewarebox.com/free_3345_procrecon-download.html
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/free/kill_process_info/index1.htm
http://webchitect.com/ProcRecon/
http://webchitect.com/ProcRecon/features.html

Running the tlist and tasklist program
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000517.htm
http://www.computerhope.com/download/winxp.htm
Enables Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional users to view
complete information about the services running on their computer.
Download & put in > C:\WINDOWS\system32 folder so it can be recongnized
via Command Prompt.
http://www.tech-recipes.com/windows_tips679.html
http://ask-leo.com/what_is_tasklistexe_and_why_dont_i_have_it.html
http://www.ss64.com/nt/tasklist.html
Managing Windows XP Programs: Tskill and Taskkill
http://commandwindows.com/taskkill.htm
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=297

Security Process Explorer
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/Security-Process-Explorer.shtml
http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/Security-Process-Explorer-Screenshot-81920.html
http://www.glarysoft.com/spe.html
http://www.download.com/Security-Process-Explorer/3000-2086_4-10635180.html?tag=lst-2

Daphne
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Programming/Debuggers-Decompilers-Dissasemblers/Daphne.shtml
http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/Daphne-Screenshot-26744.html
http://www.drk.com.ar/daphne.php

Yet Another Process Monitor
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Yet-Another-Process-Monitor.shtml
http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/Yet-Another-Process-Monitor-Screenshot-134820.html
http://yaprocmon.sourceforge.net/

 

[Patok]

Patok explained on 13/02/2011 :

Here are some programs that may take over from Task Manager & offer the
options you want.

Thank you! This is exactly what I was asking about. I'll give them all a
try. As long as at least one of them is equivalent to kill -9, it will do the
job, and allow me to selectively choose how to terminate processes - the normal
way, when I want a report sent to MS, or the quickie way, when I don't. I'll
report here which ones work the way I want, after I've had a chance to try them.

 

[Tim Meddick]

If you are asking : "Can I configure Windows to ask if I want to send an
Error Report or turn the feature off completely?" then the answer is "Yes".

The place to configure if Windows asks you if you want to send an Error
Report is located at :


"Control Panel" > "System Properties" > "Advanced" (tab) > "Error
Reporting" (button)


....and configure how Windows handles Error Reporting from there (either to
turn it of completely, only for Window's programs or specify for only
specified programs).

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

 

[choro]

If you are asking : "Can I configure Windows to ask if I want to send an
Error Report or turn the feature off completely?" then the answer is "Yes".

The place to configure if Windows asks you if you want to send an Error
Report is located at :


"Control Panel" > "System Properties" > "Advanced" (tab) > "Error
Reporting" (button)


...and configure how Windows handles Error Reporting from there (either
to turn it of completely, only for Window's programs or specify for only
specified programs).

And some notice they take of these error reports! But I dutifully send
mine anyway. ;-(

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

 

[Tim Meddick]

Indeed - I have considered just how many of these reports they must receive
each day!

I've come to the conclusion that, rather than having an image in my mind of
some Microsoft employee actually sitting there perusing over each report,
the reality must be something else, like ; if they receive allot (and it
must actually BE allot) of reports from a particular (newly released)
Window's component - then I think Yes, they do take notice of these Error
Reports, but only in terms of when thousands are received concerning a
particular aspect of programming failure....

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

If you are asking : "Can I configure Windows to ask if I want to send an
Error Report or turn the feature off completely?" then the answer is
"Yes".

The place to configure if Windows asks you if you want to send an Error
Report is located at :


"Control Panel" > "System Properties" > "Advanced" (tab) > "Error
Reporting" (button)


...and configure how Windows handles Error Reporting from there (either
to turn it of completely, only for Window's programs or specify for only
specified programs).

And some notice they take of these error reports! But I dutifully send
mine anyway. ;-(

 

[Patok]

If you are asking : "Can I configure Windows to ask if I want to send
an Error Report or turn the feature off completely?" then the answer is
"Yes".

Thanks, but that is *not* what I was asking about. I was asking how, when
error reporting is on, to preempt the data gathering and the "Do you want to
report" question, on a case by case basis, *before* actually killing the
program. Luckily, Johnw understood my question and provided abundant answers.

 

[choro]

Indeed - I have considered just how many of these reports they must
receive each day!

I've come to the conclusion that, rather than having an image in my mind
of some Microsoft employee actually sitting there perusing over each
report, the reality must be something else, like ; if they receive allot
(and it must actually BE allot) of reports from a particular (newly
released) Window's component - then I think Yes, they do take notice of
these Error Reports, but only in terms of when thousands are received
concerning a particular aspect of programming failure....

But of course. That's why I dutifully send in MY reports because I know
that they keep statistics of errors concerning specific issues. It is of
GREAT help to them to eliminage bugs but we only benefit from this
indirectly.

 

[Tim Meddick]

Well, maybe directly - when they introduce a new Windows Update "patch" on
the guidance of the resulting data collected.

But only for the relatively short time that XP [SP3] is still considered to
be a supported operating system - and therefore eligible for Automatic
Updates downloading essential "priority" updates.

XP [SP3] 's time is coming when Microsoft will hurl, it too, onto it's
scrap-heap of previous OS'es !!

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

Indeed - I have considered just how many of these reports they must
receive each day!

I've come to the conclusion that, rather than having an image in my mind
of some Microsoft employee actually sitting there perusing over each
report, the reality must be something else, like ; if they receive allot
(and it must actually BE allot) of reports from a particular (newly
released) Window's component - then I think Yes, they do take notice of
these Error Reports, but only in terms of when thousands are received
concerning a particular aspect of programming failure....

But of course. That's why I dutifully send in MY reports because I know
that they keep statistics of errors concerning specific issues. It is of
GREAT help to them to eliminage bugs but we only benefit from this
indirectly.

 

[Tim Meddick]

Of all the links that "Johnw" provided - none gave you the answer to
configuration of the operating system to allow you to by-pass the question
; "Do you want to send Microsoft an Error Report?" !!

The links do, however, provide a very good list of alternative [3rd-party]
methods for terminating hung processes, but non of them give you an option
of asking or automatically sending an Error Report.

As far as I am aware of - if you take my advice and simply "disable" Error
Reporting, in the place I included in my previous post, then I think you
will find that Windows will STILL* ask you if you want to terminate the
hung application (just not ask you about error reporting if you have
disabled it!).

*NB This is unless you have set the following registry setting to
automatically terminate all hung processes :

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"AutoEndTasks"="1"

...if this is not set, and Error Reporting has been disabled, you will just
be asked to terminate the process or wait until it becomes responsive
again...

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

 

[Patok]

Of all the links that "Johnw" provided - none gave you the answer to
configuration of the operating system to allow you to by-pass the
question ; "Do you want to send Microsoft an Error Report?" !!

You are right, not explicitly. I'm hoping (when I have a chance to test
them), that at least one of the methods/programs will be able to just cleanly
kill the hung application, without triggering the dialog about sending an error
report.

The links do, however, provide a very good list of alternative
[3rd-party] methods for terminating hung processes, but non of them give
you an option of asking or automatically sending an Error Report.

That's correct. But see, if I wanted an error report sent, I'd use the normal
method with task manager, and answer "yes" to sending the report. That's totally
not a problem, as long as the alternative method is able to terminate the
process without asking the question. The decision which method to use would be
mine, knowing (or not) the reason for the hang.

As far as I am aware of - if you take my advice and simply "disable"
Error Reporting, in the place I included in my previous post, then I
think you will find that Windows will STILL* ask you if you want to
terminate the hung application (just not ask you about error reporting
if you have disabled it!).

Yes, yes, true, but I don't want to disable error reporting, just
short-circuit the confirmation dialog sometimes.

 

[Tim Meddick]

That simply doesn't make sense ;

"Yes, yes, true, but I don't want to disable error reporting, just
short-circuit the confirmation dialog sometimes" ....

You can't have it both ways! - Either you want circumvent Error Reporting
altogether or you want to be asked.

I have explained an option to have it either way.

Error Reports simply CANNOT be sent without the confirmation dialogue -
it's just the way Windows was designed.

Plus, no other third-party app will be able to deal with Window's Error
Reports, all they will do is replace the functionality of the END TASK
dialogue on hung applications.

But, if you do want to switch from being asked to just being asked to
provide an Error Report on the "end hung application" dialogue, then I'm
sure I can come up with a batch-file that'll switch it....

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

Of all the links that "Johnw" provided - none gave you the answer to
configuration of the operating system to allow you to by-pass the
question ; "Do you want to send Microsoft an Error Report?" !!

You are right, not explicitly. I'm hoping (when I have a chance to test
them), that at least one of the methods/programs will be able to just
cleanly kill the hung application, without triggering the dialog about
sending an error report.

The links do, however, provide a very good list of alternative
[3rd-party] methods for terminating hung processes, but non of them give
you an option of asking or automatically sending an Error Report.

That's correct. But see, if I wanted an error report sent, I'd use the
normal method with task manager, and answer "yes" to sending the report.
That's totally not a problem, as long as the alternative method is able
to terminate the process without asking the question. The decision which
method to use would be mine, knowing (or not) the reason for the hang.

As far as I am aware of - if you take my advice and simply "disable"
Error Reporting, in the place I included in my previous post, then I
think you will find that Windows will STILL* ask you if you want to
terminate the hung application (just not ask you about error reporting
if you have disabled it!).

Yes, yes, true, but I don't want to disable error reporting, just
short-circuit the confirmation dialog sometimes.

 

[Patok]

That simply doesn't make sense ;

It does, but it demonstrates the truth of the old adage too - that however
clearly you think you've explained something, there'll be always somebody who
misunderstood.

"Yes, yes, true, but I don't want to disable error reporting, just
short-circuit the confirmation dialog sometimes" ....

You can't have it both ways! - Either you want circumvent Error
Reporting altogether or you want to be asked.

I have explained an option to have it either way.

Indeed, but I don't want it /either/ way - I want it *both* ways.

Let me try to explain again. Suppose I have some program that cleanly kills
processes - hung or otherwise. Suppose now that some other program is not
responding ("hangs"). I want to have these two options:

- report to MS. In that case, I'd use the Task Manager regular way, answer "yes"
twice - first to that I've chosen to end a program, and the second - to send the
report, and that would be fine

- not report, and not be asked if I want to report. In that case, I'd like to
run the utility to just kill the hanging program


I thought that the first link from "Johnw" - about using TASKKILL - would do
the job. Because when using it with the name of the program to be killed, it
works fine, the program gets killed instantly, and there is no confirmation
dialog whether I want to send a report to MS or not. However, when I try to use
it to my liking, it doesn't work. When I do:
TASKKILL /F /FI "STATUS eq NOT RESPONDING"
it just says:
INFO: No tasks running with the specified criteria.
even though the status in Task Manager is clearly "not responding". This is
weird; something's not right.

There is another workable solution, though - checking now, I see that Process
Explorer kills cleanly and does not invoke the error reporting dialog. The
problem is that I don't normally run it, its history graphs being almost
useless. I could start it up every time I wanted to kill a hanging program, but
if above TaskKill batch file worked, it would be even better.

 

[Tim Meddick]

I notice it can be a bit like pulling teeth to get you to actually notice
anything I have written in posts subsequent to their previous ones...

For example ; in this latest post I am going to try and bring your
attention to the fact I wrote :

If you set the following registry value :

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"AutoEndTasks"="1"

You will not be asked to end ANY applications - they will just be
terminated (after a specified time allotted specified in another part of
the registry).

The ONLY interruption you will ever get then is IF you do NOT disable Error
Reporting - then you will be asked every time a M$ program is involved, to
send an Error Report!


I'm am sorry, though, not to be able to help you with the TASKKILL
problem - I an see your point having gone over your provided syntax. You
will have to wait until I have such a program that is "NOT RESPONDING" to
be able to examine it for myself.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.

 

[Patok]

I notice it can be a bit like pulling teeth to get you to actually
notice anything I have written in posts subsequent to their previous
ones...

For example ; in this latest post I am going to try and bring your
attention to the fact I wrote :

If you set the following registry value :

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"AutoEndTasks"="1"

You will not be asked to end ANY applications - they will just be
terminated (after a specified time allotted specified in another part of
the registry).

Oh, I noticed this section; sorry if by not responding to it I created the
wrong impression. But see, it is "barking up the wrong tree". I'm most certainly
*not* interested in automatically ending a hanging program, no matter what the
time delay. Thanks for mentioning it, however, because I did not know before
that such functionality existed; I'll keep it in mind should I need it in the
future.