How to debug minidump files

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Learn how your comment data is processed. Tim Trott is a creative photographer, traveller, astronomer and software engineer with a passion for self-growth and a desire for personal challenge. Microsoft R Windows Debugger Version 6.

All rights reserved. About the Author. You May Also Like. To examine the code that was running on the crashing computer, the debugger must be given access to the same binaries that the crashing computer was running. The debugger uses the name and time stamp stored in the minidump file to uniquely match and load the binaries when the developer wants to debug the crash. After the images and symbols are loaded in the debugger, you can analyze the state of the system at the time of the crash, including data that was saved after the crash occurred.

The minidump does not, however, reproduce the steps that led to the specific failure. Finding the root cause requires analyzing the driver's source code to determine what code path may have led to the failure. Experience has shown that a large percentage of failures can be understood and addressed by analyzing dump files and source code. The best way to access matching images and symbols is to use the Microsoft symbol server. Symbols are data that enable the debugger to map the executable code back to the source code.

When you build a program, the program's symbols are usually stored in symbol files. When a debugger analyzes a program, it needs to access the program's symbols.

The symbol files that contain all of the source-level information are called full symbol files. The symbol files with reduced information are called stripped symbol files. For more information, see BinPlace. Because symbol data is crucial for getting meaningful crash information from Windows Error Report WER data, we encourage you to submit your symbols when you submit drivers to be signed.

Since usbhub. Odds are good the usbhub. Ah ha! Dang — Asus owes me a donut for doing all the work for them. You also find out that someone else already had the same problem … There are many other debugging commands you can also use, and those are all outlined here. Especially if they are repeatable. Always get the latest drivers first. This prevents Windows from making calls into possibly faulty driver code. Power mangament issues are very common with drivers still.

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