Generating Crash Dumps

Crash dumps are useful for diagnosing, analyzing, and debugging CygNet application crashes by keeping records of crashes to be used for analysis, and saving the results to a .DMP log file. CygNet Software does not have an internal process to generate crash dumps, although there are some methods for generating memory dumps provided by Microsoft.

Use Windows Task Manager to Generate a Crash Dump

You can use Windows Task manager to generate a memory dump file for any process while running.

To generate a crash dump file for a running CygNet process

1. Start Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc.
2. Click the Processes tab.
3. Right-click the name of the process for which you want to generate a crash dump, and select Create dump file from the context menu. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type your password or click Continue. A dump file (<process name>.DMP) for the process is created in the following folder: C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Temp.

The following image shows a sample Task Manager dialog box with the Create dump file option:

4. Once the dump file is successfully created, click OK.
5. Move the file from the above Temp folder to a location of your choosing.

Use ProcDump to Generate a Crash Dump

A powerful memory dump generator outside of CygNet is ProcDump, a command-line utility that is part of the Windows Sysinternals suite. This tool can be used to generate N number of memory dumps in a row or generate a memory dump when a Performance Monitor (Perfmon) counter reaches a specific threshold. Using ProcDump, you can generate a memory dump in the event of some failures, rather than the more general exception logs.

Refer to the Microsoft topic ProcDump for information about using the ProcDump utility.

Windows Error Reporting

While CygNet does not automatically forward crash dump files to Microsoft, you can set up your own internal Windows Error Reporting (WER) server to receive crash reports, which can be shared with CygNet Support or Microsoft at a later point, if desired.

To configure a Windows Error Reporting Server

1. At a command prompt, type gpedit.msc and click Enter. The Local Group Policy Editor dialog box opens.
2. Select Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Error Reporting > Advanced Error Reporting Settings
3. Double click Configure Corporate Windows Error Reporting to open the dialog box.
4. Enable and configure the corporate server name where you want to send error reports.
5. Click Apply and OK.

More Information

For information about transaction logs and crash recovery for the ESE data storage technology (for CygNet’s DBS-based services), see Transaction Logs and Crash Recovery.

The Microsoft topic Collecting User-Mode Dumps contains information about configuring the LocalDumps registry setting so that user-mode dumps can be collected and stored locally after a user-mode application, such as CygNet, crashes.

CygNet recommends setting DumpType to 2 to generate a full dump, which is more helpful for extracting useful information.