LKBEN10857: Howto enable Dr. Watson on a terminal server (citrix) system for debugging purposes


Symptom

You would like to be able to see when an application is being killed by the operating system

Cause

none

Solution

To enable Dr. Watson you open a command line and execute the following command:

drwtsn32.exe -i

Please note that Dr. Watson is just the default debugger from windows and is delivered with the Windows OS. In fact, microsoft calls it a debugger but it hardly is. It is used as a tool to write crash information and dumps. When you are nerved by Dr. Watson you should know that this tool can not be made responsible for bad software. It is an indication for having bad written software on your machine. After a crash has been captured a log file will be written. (drwtsn32.log) Now you can do some post mortem Debugging to find out what happened.

Disclaimer:

The information provided in this document is intended for your information only. Lubby makes no claims to the validity of this information. Use of this information is at own risk!

About the Author

Author: Wim Peeters - Keskon GmbH & Co. KG

Wim Peeters is electronics engineer with an additional master in IT and over 30 years of experience, including time spent in support, development, consulting, training and database administration. Wim has worked with SQL Server since version 6.5. He has developed in C/C++, Java and C# on Windows and Linux. He writes knowledge base articles to solve IT problems and publishes them on the Lubby Knowledge Platform.