Extending crash dumps with Windows Error Reporting

io.Connect Desktop
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When investigating platform crashes, the log files and crash dumps generated by io.Connect Desktop are typically the first sources we examine. However, there are cases where the platform terminates unexpectedly—such as when it is forcibly ended in Task Manager, resulting in log files abruptly stopping and no crash dump being generated.

In such situations, we turn to Windows Event Viewer to gather additional information about the crash’s cause. If Event Viewer does not provide sufficient details, Windows Error Reporting (WER) can be used to generate an additional crash dump for deeper investigation.

This approach is particularly useful when:

  • The issue is reproducible
  • The application crashes consistently
  • Existing logs and standard io.Connect crash diagnostics do not provide enough detail

By leveraging Windows Error Reporting in these cases, we can capture more detailed diagnostic information and gain further insight into the underlying cause of the crash.

How this fits together with logs and io.Connect crash reports

Each source helps in a slightly different way:

  • io.Connect logs help show what was happening before the crash
  • io.Connect crash reports help confirm that a crash occurred and provide basic crash information
  • Windows crash dumps can provide much deeper technical detail from the moment of the crash

How to enable full crash dump generation

  1. Open Registry Editor (search for Registry Editor in the Windows search bar).

  2. Navigate to the following path:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps

  3. If the LocalDumps key does not exist, create it.

  4. Inside the LocalDumps key, create a new value:

    • Name: DumpFolder
    • Type: Expandable String Value
    • Value data: %LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps

  5. In the same key, create another value:

    • Name: DumpType
    • Type: DWORD (32-bit) Value
    • Value data: 2

Setting DumpType to 2 enables the generation of full memory dumps.

After these settings are configured, Windows will automatically generate a crash dump whenever the application crashes. The dump files will be saved in the following location:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps

If the issue is reproducible or occurs again, please reproduce the crash and send us (Support) the generated .dmp file so that we can investigate the root cause.

Notes

  • Enabling this requires access to the Windows Registry, so you may need administrator rights.
  • Full memory dumps can be quite large.
  • Dump files may contain sensitive information from process memory, so they should be handled carefully and shared only through approved channels.
  • It is best to collect the dump together with the relevant io.Connect logs and any io.Connect crash reports from the same incident/timeframe.
  • When sending the dump, it also helps to include a short description of what the user was doing just before the crash and whether the issue is reproducible.
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