How to debug a Windows Store app that crashes on a customer's machine?

Question

I got a support email from a customer saying his app crashes when it starts and all he gets is a message like:

(App Name) ran into a problem You can send info to Microsoft about what went wrong to help improve this app.

Files that will be sent to Microsoft C:\Users\User_Name\AppData\Local\Temp\WER####.tmp.appcompat.txt C:\Users\User_Name\AppData\Local\Temp\WER####.tmp.hdmp

I thought - Microsoft isn't going to help them really with my silly app. They should send the dump file to me for debugging, but how to do it? A sample dump file I got from a crashing app was 90MB and after zipping it is still 30MB. How do I debug the app? Is there a simple way to get these dump files from a customer? These also get deleted right after you switched from the crashing app window to the desktop unless you leave it running (crashed) in snapped view and hit WinKey+D.

Bename

Have you seen markedup.com? It's an interesting way to add some instrumentation to your app. Get some error telemetry. Etc. – Burgas

No, I haven't, thanks for sharing! I haven't actually been thinking much about adding analytics to my apps, but you reminded me that it might be the right time to think about it! :) – Bename

Answer 1

It seems like the Windows developer Dashboard has an option to get mini dump files for most common crashes that could help find the problem (assuming your customer is having one of the most common problems for a crash or that there are actually few problems causing your app to crash and all of them are there). You just need to go to:

Dashboard/App/Reports/Quality/Most common crashes

There you can download a cab file that includes the mini dump from there. You might be able to extract the file by just renaming cab to zip or using a tool that extracts cab archives. Then just open the dump file in WinDbg and start debugging!

Bename