Wednesday, 7th November 2007Collecting Crash Dumps for MDaemon (Debugging Error Messages)
When you receive errors in MDaemon its useful to collect detail crash dump data - here's how to do it.
If MDaemon is crashing or kicking up errors (such as application errors), it helps the excellent technical support chaps there if you can send them "dumps" - now while this sounds like something you may do if they weren't providing satifactory support, it is in fact a report comprised of data from the process and state of the server at the time the error occurred.
MDaemon advise you to update to the latest version of MDaemon if you haven't already done so. If you are running MDaemon on Windows XP or a flavour of Microsoft Server 2003 then you should also disable DEP (detailed information on DEP, including instructions on disabling it can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352).
Check for Existing Dump Files
Depending on the exact configuration of your system, it may already have produced dump files when MDaemon crashed - these are often found in a folder located at C:\WINDOWS\PCHealth\ERRORREP\UserDumps. If they cannot be found here, try doing a search of the C drive for files with a .DMP or .MDMP extension (clicking search in Windows Explorer or Start > Search > Files and Folders and entering: *.dmp; *.mdmp will search for either/both of these).
None found? ADPlus - the next step.
If you don't find any dump files then all is not lost, Microsoft provide free debugging tools on their website, go to www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/ and download the tools from their and install them on the problem system.
IMPORTANT: Once you complete the instructions to set ADPlus running you need to be aware that:
- ADPlus doesn't run as a service.
- Closing ADPlus terminates MDaemon.
- Logging out of your session in Windows ends the ADPlus window (meaning MDaemon's service will in turn be terminated when you log out).
- You MUST leave your session running and leave ADPlus running for it to work.
- If your doing this via Remote Desktop Connection, check your settings to see if idle sessions get logged off automatically after a set period of time.
Right - lets continue...
To make running the commands as simple as possible, I put them in a batch file so you simply save on your desktop and double click (this assumes you installed ADPlus in the default directory). Download my batch file and unzip to your desktop (or preferred scripts store): Click here to download the zip file).
Make sure all instances of MDaemon Ghost are closed.
Double click the "enableADPlusForMDaemon.bat" file to run ADPlus and begin monitoring.
You may recieve an error message saying "WARNING! An '_NT_SYMBOL_PATH' environment variable is not set, as a result ADPlus will be forced to use 'export' symbols..." - this is fine, you can safely click Ok.
For those wishing to manually launch ADPlus
- Open a command prompt
- hange directory to 'C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows'Type 'ADPlus -crash -pn
- MDaemon.exe -nodumponfirst'
Windows Scripting Host Side Effect of ADPlus
ADPlus requires that the default Windows scripting host is CScript and changes it to this automatically. You can switch it back using the batch file provided or by entering:
WScript.exe /H:WScript at the command prompt after your done with ADPlus.