Lab 17.2: Using Dr. Watson

One of the promises Microsoft made to its end users was that Windows would become a stable platform—that is, applications would stop crashing. Even though applications still crash occasionally, Microsoft has provided a tool to help application programmers collect debugging information. This tool is Dr. Watson. Dr. Watson allows you to gather necessary information that can then be sent to the application developers so they can isolate the causes of application errors. In Windows 98, you can create a snapshot of what is running on the system at the time of the snapshot.

Upon completion of this lab, you will be able to:

• Launch Dr. Watson

• Create a snapshot in Windows 98

• Configure Dr. Watson

Set Up

For this lab, you will need a computer running Windows 98, Windows 2000, or Windows XP.

Exercises

When an application crashes constantly, you may want to collect information to send back to the developers so they can resolve the issues. The information is collected into a dump file. The dump file contains the data stored in memory for evaluation. This information can then be debugged to isolate which part of the code is the culprit. Often, a patch can be written to resolve all the issues.

Launching Dr. Watson

To launch Dr. Watson,

1. Choose Start Run.

2. In Windows 98, type C:\windows\drwatson.

   In Windows 2000/XP, type drwtsn32.

Creating a Snapshot in Windows 98

To create a snapshot in Windows 98,

1. Right-click on the Dr. Watson icon in the Taskbar. From the shortcut menu, select Dr Watson to collect the snapshot.

2. To view the snapshot, follow this sequence from the menu:

   View Advanced View

3. Click on the System tab and record the system information:

4. Click on the User Drivers tab and record the drivers being used by the user:

5. Click on the MS-DOS Drivers tab and record the drivers being used by DOS:

Configuring Dr. Watson

In Windows 98:

1. Right-click on the Dr. Watson icon on the Taskbar and select Options.

2. When the Dr. Watson Options window appears, record the number of instructions to be recorded and the dump file’s path:

In Windows 2000 and XP:

1. After you type drwtsn32 in the Run field, the Dr. Watson Option window opens. Record the number of instructions to be recorded and the dump file’s path: