DevStudio 6 can load crash dumps

Ok, heres a fun trick when it comes to debugging particularly interesting problems. the sort of interesting problem that occours when you dont have DevStudio handy, but would really like to examine the state of the machine as it crashed, using the debugger.

Enter crash dumps - a complete snapshot of the process memory, in a state such that a debugger, like WinDbg, or even DevStudio, can load it up and display it as though it was a real app that had just crashed.

First setup DrWatson. From the command line run 'DrWtsn32 -i' to install DrWatson as the default just in time debugger, and then again run 'DrWtsn32' just to set it up to generate a crash dump.

Next, open up the registry key HKCU\Microsoft\DevStudio\6.0\Debug and add or edit the REG_DWORD value CrashDumpEnabled to '1'.

Now, once youve obtained your crash dump as a .dmp file, open up a new instance of DevStudio and choose 'Open Workspace'. In the Filetype selector there should be a new, previously unseen option; 'Dump Files (.dmp)'.