How do I obtain a crash dump

Question

I need to get a crash dump from a program. How do i get it? The Program is written in C#. What exactly is a crash dump? When is it created? Where is it saved? How do i read

Answer 1

On Windows XP you can create a dump file with this utility:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e089ca41-6a87-40c8-bf69-28ac08570b7e&displaylang=en

Once installed browse to the installation directory and run

userdump PID

from the command line where PID is the PID of the process you want to get a crash dump of (you can find this in task manager, but you might need to add the column to the standard view).

This file can then be opened in Visual Studio - you just need to make sure you have the symbols built.

In Windows 7 just right click on the process in Task Manager and select "Create Dump File"