Thursday, July 16, 2009

How to generate and examine windows core dumps

How to generate and examine windows core dumps

Look at help-->contents (.chm) for detailed reference

You will not be able to see symbols in the dump file if you don't have the symbol database (.pdb) file for your application. The /Z7 option that puts the symbol information in the .obj files did not help.

gotcha : when /Zi option is used and code compiled through ssh session, the com,piler fails. Running the build through windows command prompt works !


I had to compile the product with /Zi (for cl.exe) option that created vc80.pdb file.
Then during linking, use /DEBUG /PDB:/path/to/.pdb . The .pdb file generated in the link step can be used with windbg

reference:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yd4f8bd1%28v=vs.71%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yd4f8bd1.aspx

you can also extract pdb from an executable that is compiled with /Z7 option (as documented here) . did not work for me though
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/258205