Recipe 16.21. Troubleshooting Application Failures with the Dr. Watson Logs


Recipe 16.21. Troubleshooting Application Failures with the Dr. Watson Logs

Problem

You have an application that is failing and you want to find out why.

Solution

Whenever a program crashes, the Dr. Watson tool automatically appends a bunch of information to a log file located at %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\All Users.WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson\drwtsn32.log. It writes things such as the application name, exception code, when the exception occurred, processes running at the time, DLLs loaded by the application, and a state dump of all threads. Depending on your level of technical sophistication, much of the log file may look indecipherable, but if the problem persists, you can provide this file to the technical support group of the application vendor and it will help them.

Discussion

Viewing log file with a text editor like Notepad can be a little cumbersome. You can use the Dr. Watson utility to select and view specific application failures. From a command line or the Start Run menu, enter drwtsn32.exe and press Enter. You'll see a screen similar to that of Figure 16-3.

Figure 16-3. Dr. Watson utility


At the bottom under Application Errors, you can select from all of the previous application crashes and click View. This will launch a viewer that shows only the output related to that crash.

As you can see, this tool is useful for much more than viewing errors. You can also configure a variety of failure options. You can change the default log file path and also configure notification options.

The Dr. Watson failure settings are stored in the Registry under the following key:


HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DrWatson

See Also

MS KB 275481, "How to Troubleshoot Program Faults with Dr. Watson," and MS KB 308538, "Description of the Dr. Watson for Windows (Drwtsn32.exe) Tool"



Windows XP Cookbook
Windows XP Cookbook (Cookbooks)
ISBN: 0596007256
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 408

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