Getting started with dump file analysis

Question

I am working with a legacy VB6/COM application which sometimes causes Windows 7 to crash. I have now generated a .dmp file of one of these crashes using the ProcDump tool from Sysinternals. However, I have never worked with dump files before. Which resources would you recommend for getting started with dump file analysis?

Fulgent

Answer 1

Some more links that might be usefull

WinDBG and tools:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/

.Net extension for WinDBG:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/tools/sos-dll-sos-debugging-extension

Zinnia

Perhaps the most important Windbg command to learn is !analyze -v -- it will perform some heuristics to work out where the actual source of the crash is likely to be (which isn't necessarily the stored call stack) and give you a very useful summary. – Fabric

Edit queues are full, but the first URL in this post needs to be updated to learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger . It does redirect, but to a page that isn't the correct WinDBG download page. The URL I've pasted in here is the correct one. – Ornithosis

Answer 2

There are some books such as "Advanced Windows Debugging" or the books on this guy's blog that can help.

There is also knowing assembler that you will need.

Use WinDbg or any other debugger. The above mentioned book is for WinDbg specifically though.

Tollman