How to analyze WER collected crash dump of .NET application with VS2010?

Question

I have an NET 4.0 application which causes an unhandled exception when run. When I run it from VS2010 it breaks on exception line and I can save dump. When I load the dump later I get exactly to the place when it crashed and I am able to see value of a local variable.

I have enabled crash dumps collecting in Win 7 (Collecting User mode dumps in even if Windows Error reporting is disabled).

When I load the dump created by WER I am only able to see where exception occures in native code (even if I start mixed mode debug).

Is it possible to achieve similar behavior as with WER as with VS dump?

Answer 1

I have made some research and found key information just by chance. 'Just my code' option in Options/Debug must be disabled to see the application source code. Otherwise the applicatinon code is hidden under [External code] in Stack trace and therefore is not accessible.

Answer 2

This series of videos helped me with a similar situation. In them, the presenter explains how to capture and deal with crash dumps from both managed and unmanaged code to solve common problems, like memory leaks and performance issues in production systems:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/-NET-Debugging-Stater-Kit-for-the-Production-Environment/Diagnosing-Application-Issues-01