Archive for the ‘ Win x64 ’ Category

Scenario: You have a 32-bit managed process running on a 64-bit machine. The process crashes sometimes. The customer created a crash dump in the Task Manager and sent it to you. You try to open it in the VS Debugger, but realize that the call stack looks really strange and does not contain any useful information. What’s the problem?
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Debugging of Windows Services in general is not an easy task. Due to their nature Windows Services require some tricks from a developer. One of the most hardest problem with Windows Services is the crashes in the production environment due to unhandled exceptions in the program, e.g. access violation, division by zero, etc. In such situations crash dumps are invaluable. Of course, you should always keep in mind to save the binaries and debug symbols for each build and do correct versioning. Some developers include exception handlers right into Windows Services, so the program itself can write a crash dump. Another option is to write an external watch-dog application (usually, another small Windows Service, which controls the execution of main Service and writes a mini dump in case of problems).
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