How to analyse WERInternalMetadata.xml file generated by Windows Crash Reporter?

Question

A .Net 4.0 app keeps crashing for a user, but just for him, I could not reproduce the bug. He attached the WERInternalMetadata.xml file generated by the Windows

Answer 1

Firstly, here's what's in that WER trace:

<Parameter0>rstvshowtracker.exe</Parameter0> - your exe
<Parameter1>1.0.3842.33258</Parameter1> - version of your exe
<Parameter2>4c374e79</Parameter2> - exe timestamp
<Parameter3>mscorlib</Parameter3> - assembly / module
<Parameter4>4.0.0.0</Parameter4> - assembly version
<Parameter5>4ba1da6f</Parameter5> - assm timestamp
<Parameter6>1620</Parameter6> - methodDef token of faulting method 
<Parameter7>14</Parameter7> - IL offset of faulting instruction
<Parameter8>System.IO.FileNotFoundException</Parameter8> - exception

You could use WinDBG and SOS to find out what that method is (e.g. 1620). See the example here on how to do it: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oanapl/archive/2009/01/30/windows-error-reporting-wer-and-clr-integration.aspx

...Alternatively, you could hook up the unhandledException event in your application, and print out the exception stack trace to a log file, to see what caused the issue; e.g.

static void MyHandler(object sender, UnhandledExceptionEventArgs args) 
{
   Exception e = (Exception) args.ExceptionObject;
   // print out the exception stack trace to a log
}

public static void Main() 
{
   AppDomain currentDomain = AppDomain.CurrentDomain;
   currentDomain.UnhandledException += new UnhandledExceptionEventHandler(MyHandler);
}