Crash Dump Analysis

As one of the new initiatives for the Year of Debugging  DumpAnalysis Portal will publish bimonthly full color 16 page publication called:

Debugged! MZ/PE: MagaZine for/from Practicing Engineers
The only serial publication dedicated entirely to Windows® debugging

The first issue is planned for March, 2009 and will have ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-38-4. If it goes well I’m planning to have ISSN number assigned to it too. More details will be announced soon.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org - 

Got this book yesterday in the post and started reading. Table of contents is amazing for its practical depth and breadth. If you want me to provide a review in a language of concurrency  (I’m reading many books in parallel) I would simply say one word:

Priority!

It simply means priority reading for any Windows software developer and maintainer. Invaluable for any engineer debugging complex software problems and analyzing Windows crash dumps. Simply because Microsoft OS and CLR developers use all this concurrent stuff and best practices described in the book so it is vital to be able recognize them in memory dumps. After reading this book you also get priority boost in your understanding of process and thread dynamics and your ability to plan, architect, design and implement concurrent applications and services.

Concurrent Programming on Windows (Microsoft .NET Development Series)

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

CtxHideEx32 tool has been updated to the version 1.1 and can be downloaded from Citrix support. It now allows a substring search for a window title or class, for example:

CtxHideEx32.exe HIDE "*error" "" OK

As by-product coupled with an optional command line I discovered that it allows to automatically dump any process displaying a message box with an error message in its window title. Here is an example using TestDefaultDebugger64 to simulate an application fault message where the following instance of CtxHideEx32 was setup to dump a process showing WER dialog on Vista:

CtxHideEx32.exe NONE "*Microsoft Windows" "" "C:\kktools\userdump8.1\x64\userdump.exe %d"

We click on a big lightning button:

and then WER dialog appears:

Immediately CtxHideEx32 kicks in and starts dumping the owner process incessantly so you better to dismiss this dialog by choosing something:

We see it was WerFault.exe. 

Note: I think I have to amend CtxHideEx32 to make it wait until the spawned command line interpreter finishes its job. Stay tuned.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Matthieu Suiche has released the new version of win32dd tool with the ability to save physical memory in a WinDbg-compliant memory dump file including pages that normally are not saved in a complete memory dump.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Previously announced book Crash Dump Analysis for System Administrators has got its draft cover featuring WinDbg  output from a kernel memory dump forced by Citrix SystemDump tool.

Front:

Back:

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Paperback edition of Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 2 is finally available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Search Inside is also available on Amazon. In addition, I updated the list of recommended books:

Listmania! Crash Dump Analysis and Debugging

Hardcover edition will be available on Amazon and B&N in 2-3 weeks.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

“Everything is memory dump.”

I’m very excited to announce that Volume 2 is available in paperback, hardcover and digital editions:

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 2

In one or two weeks paperback edition should also appear on Amazon and other bookstores. Amazon hardcover edition is planned to be available by the end of October.

I’m often asked when Volume 3 is available and I currently plan to release it in October - November, 2009. In the mean time I’m planning to concentrate on other publishing projects. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

The book is nearly finished and here is the final TOC:

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 2: Table of Contents

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Today Citrix officially joined the club of public symbol server companies! Please refer to the following article for details:

How to Use the Citrix Symbol Server to Obtain Debug Symbols

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

“Crash dumps are fossils” 

Here is the draft TOC for the previously announced book Crash Dump Analysis for System Administrators (Windows Edition) which I’m co-authoring with Thomas Monahan, a Lead Escalation Engineer at Citrix Systems:

Table of Contents

 - Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -