Debugging in vc++

I have an VC++ exe in Remote (customer end).They are repoterd that crashing has occurred.How to identify the problem cause without using the source code and i want to use only 开发者_开发技巧.pdb file to analyse .Please tell me how to use .pdb file for debugging.

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As a first step get the crash dump using WIndbg or DebugDiag

Please check with customer whether it is ok to install any of the above mentioned tools and get the dump.

Ask thecustomer to send the dump for the crash of the particular exe that you are saying is crashing.

Next analyse the dump file using windbg or debugdiag in your machine using the right pdb.

please tell if any more information is required. Minimal help for analysing the dump will be given in the help files of windbg or debugdiag itself.

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You can also open dump and mini dump files in Visual Studio as well (Open them with Open Project... and point at the dmp file.) If you have pdb files that is properly indexed, you can often get a proper call stack that will point you to where the error occurred.

You should also check out Windows Error Reporting. If this is commercially available software, I suggest you sign your binary files before deployment. You can then ask the customers to submit errors to Microsoft through their standard Windows Error Reporting Service.

On the other side, you can sign up on their WER portal and identity yourself with the certificate you signed the binaries with. From the portal you can get error statistics and download specific dump files.

If the software runs in an isolated environment - a private domain, you can push out a custom global policy in your active directory, that configures WER to submit dump files to a specific Windows share in your domain where the developers can collect them.

Hope this helps,

--larsw

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Here are the initial steps to follow:

On the customer machine:

a. install windbg. this can be downloaded from the microsoft website.
b. once installed register the just in time debugger [windbg -l].
c. execute the application which is causing the crash.
d. the windbg will automatically open up when there is a crash.
e. save the dump file.

On your machine:

a. open the crash dump using windbg.
b. set the pdb files and source files on your machine in windbg.
c. You can generate pdb's using the project properties in visual studio.

More details I found in: http://kmdarshan.com/blog/2011/06/29/windows-debugging-using-windbg/