Crash Dump Analysis

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Some bugs are fixed using brute-force approach via putting an exception handler to catch access violations and other exceptions. Long time ago I saw one such “incredible fix” when the image processing application was crashing after approximately Nth heap free runtime call. To ignore crashes a SEH handler was put in place but the application started to crash in different places. Therefore the additional fix was to skip free calls when approaching N and resume afterwards. The application started to crash less frequently.

Here getting Early Crash Dump when a first-chance exception happens can help in component identification before corruption starts spreading across data. Recall that when an access violation happens in a process thread in user mode the system generates the first-chance exception which can be caught by an attached debugger and if there is no such debugger the system tries to find an exception handler and if that exception handler catches and dismisses the exception the thread resumes its normal execution path. If there are no such handlers found the system generates the so called second-chance exception with the same exception context to notify the attached debugger and if it is not attached a default thread exception handler usually saves a postmortem user dump.

You can get first-chance exception memory dumps with:

• Debug Diagnostics

• ADPlus in crash mode from Debugging Tools for Windows

• Exception Monitor from User Mode Process Dumper package 

Here is an example configuration rule for crashes in Debug Diagnostic tool for TestDefaultDebugger process (Unconfigured First Chance Exceptions option is set to Full Userdump):

    

When we push the big crash button in TestDefaultDebugger dialog box two crash dumps are saved, with first and second-chance exceptions pointing to the same code:

Loading Dump File [C:\Program Files (x86)\DebugDiag\Logs\Crash rule for all instances of TestDefaultDebugger.exe\TestDefaultDebugger__PID__4316__ Date__11_21_2007__Time_04_28_27PM__2__First chance exception 0XC0000005.dmp]
User Mini Dump File with Full Memory: Only application data is available

Comment: 'Dump created by DbgHost. First chance exception 0XC0000005′
Symbol search path is: srv*c:\mss*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
Executable search path is:
Windows Vista Version 6000 MP (2 procs) Free x86 compatible
Product: WinNt, suite: SingleUserTS
Debug session time: Wed Nov 21 16:28:27.000 2007 (GMT+0)
System Uptime: 0 days 23:45:34.711
Process Uptime: 0 days 0:01:09.000

This dump file has an exception of interest stored in it.
The stored exception information can be accessed via .ecxr.
(10dc.590): Access violation - code c0000005 (first/second chance not available)
eax=00000000 ebx=00000001 ecx=0017fe70 edx=00000000 esi=00425ae8 edi=0017fe70
eip=004014f0 esp=0017f898 ebp=0017f8a4 iopl=0 nv up ei ng nz ac pe cy
cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b efl=00010297
TestDefaultDebugger!CTestDefaultDebuggerDlg::OnBnClickedButton1:
004014f0 c7050000000000000000 mov dword ptr ds:[0],0  ds:002b:00000000=????????

Loading Dump File [C:\Program Files (x86)\DebugDiag\Logs\Crash rule for all instances of TestDefaultDebugger.exe\TestDefaultDebugger__PID__4316__ Date__11_21_2007__Time_04_28_34PM__693__ Second_Chance_Exception_C0000005.dmp]
User Mini Dump File with Full Memory: Only application data is available

Comment: 'Dump created by DbgHost. Second_Chance_Exception_C0000005‘
Symbol search path is: srv*c:\mss*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
Executable search path is:
Windows Vista Version 6000 MP (2 procs) Free x86 compatible
Product: WinNt, suite: SingleUserTS
Debug session time: Wed Nov 21 16:28:34.000 2007 (GMT+0)
System Uptime: 0 days 23:45:39.313
Process Uptime: 0 days 0:01:16.000

This dump file has an exception of interest stored in it.
The stored exception information can be accessed via .ecxr.
(10dc.590): Access violation - code c0000005 (first/second chance not available)
eax=00000000 ebx=00000001 ecx=0017fe70 edx=00000000 esi=00425ae8 edi=0017fe70
eip=004014f0 esp=0017f898 ebp=0017f8a4 iopl=0 nv up ei ng nz ac pe cy
cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b efl=00010297
TestDefaultDebugger!CTestDefaultDebuggerDlg::OnBnClickedButton1:
004014f0 c7050000000000000000 mov dword ptr ds:[0],0  ds:002b:00000000=????????

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

           

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Crash Dump Analysis, Crash Dump Patterns, Debugging, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.