Appendix A -- Reading Dr. Watson Log Files

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Dr. Watson should really be named Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In Dr. Jekyll mode, you get the information about a crash on a user's machine and can easily find where the crash occurred and fix it quickly. In Mr. Hyde mode, all you get is another set of numbers that don't tell you anything. In this appendix, I'll explain how to read Dr. Watson logs so that you can see less of Mr. Hyde and more of Dr. Jekyll.

I'll walk you through a complete Dr. Watson log in the following pages, explaining all the pertinent information as we go. (Relevant information in a particular section appears in boldface type.) The crash log in this appendix is for an early version of WDBG.EXE, the debugger I wrote in Chapter 4.

Now that you've read this book, nothing in the Dr. Watson log should come as a big surprise. The log here is from Microsoft Windows 2000, but a log produced by Microsoft Windows NT 4 would be identical. The Microsoft Windows 98 Dr. Watson logs are similar in core information to the one shown in this appendix, and once you understand how to read the Windows 2000 version of the log, you'll know enough to be able to read a Windows 98 log. I'll cover the information unique to Windows 98 at the end of this appendix.