Suddenly application crash - Fatal Execution Engine Error (7A0BC59E) (80131506)

Question

Completely random and suddenly our application crashes on its production environment. The application runs on Windows XP and .net framework 3.5 sp1. In the application we provide a WCF service and we use the serial port.

When the application crashes it leaves messages in the application log:

.NET Runtime version 2.0.50727.3625 - Fatal Execution Engine Error (7A0BC59E) (80131506)

 For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

and

Faulting application ***.exe, version 1.0.0.0, stamp 4f48b8fc, faulting module  mscorwks.dll, version 2.0.50727.3625, stamp 4e154c98, debug? 0, fault address 0x000a03ea.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

On our test environment we do have similar problems.

On the internet I find several identical problems, all mention hot fixes or reinstalls. But I want to know what happens and do not want happens. Does anyone knows what happens and how we can fix it?

[edit] Besides the application also Sophos antivirus and MySql is installed.

[edit 2] In our application we use a C-library wrapped in a .net package. We use the library in more applications and in those it does not give the exceptions.

[edit 3] Cannot answer my own question Well I found something:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959209/en-us 958481 List of the issues that are addressed by the Application Compatibility Update for the .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2

In the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, because of the changes that are made in checking a NULL value to support address space layout randomization (ASLR), a failure case causes an access violation in the runtime. This access violation manifests as an ExecutionEngineException exception. Additionally, the process is terminated.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?amp;displaylang=en&id=10006

Banta

Are you catching unhandled exceptions? that might give some extra information regarding the problem – Isopod

Unfortunately this exception gets past all my catches and closes the application. The exception does occur immediately, but after hours/days (last exception occurred after almost 2 days). – Banta

Try catching the unhandled ones, it`ll probably help you or atleast give you some more information regarding this problem – Isopod

possible duplicate of Application Crashes With "Internal Error In The .NET Runtime" – Worthy

I've edited my question, with a possible solution. @Hans Passant, indeed he also gets an ExecutionEngineException, only he uses .net 4.0. – Banta

Answer 1

i suggest you use MS Debugging tools for windows's AdPlus utility to take a full dump of the process when it crashes and then use WinDBG to see what happend. (using !threads , !clrstack ,!PrintException).

Hydrography

Thanks for the advise, i didn't know the tool. Unfortunately the problem only occurs in our production environment and we can't reproduce the exception. Besides that we don't know when it happens, most of the time we notice the unhanded exception popup in the morning. I will give the tool a try at my workstation. – Banta

@Bojo: i completely understand, we had similar issues in the past. as for your points : you can run the tool and it will only take a dump when the server fails. you can safely do it in a prod environment it was designed for this purpose. – Hydrography

I will give it a try. It will not hurt if I don't know it works. So next weird event I will use it. – Banta

I've just updated the .net framework with the above mentioned update (start post). Now wait of the exceptions stays away. – Banta

Looks like the framework update solves the exceptions and application crashes. – Banta

@Banta thanks for the update, already up voted the question, i hope others will find the answer also. – Hydrography