Analysing crash dump in windbg

Question

I am using a third party closed source API which throws an exception stating that \"all named pipes are busy\".

I would like to debug this further (rather than just step

Answer 1

I assume that the 3rd party dll is native (Otherwise, just use Reflector)

Before using WinDbg to analyze the dump, try using Process-Monitor (SysInternals, freeware) to monitor your process's activity. if it fails because of a file system related issue, you can see exactly what caused the problem and what exactly it tried to do before failing.

If Process-Monitor wasn't enough than you can try and debug your process. but in order to see some meaningful information about the 3rd party dll you'll need it's pdb's.

After setting the correct debug symbols, you can view the call stack by using the k command or one of it's variations (again, I assume you're talking about native code). if your process is indeed crashing because of this dll than examine the parameters that you pass to it's function to ensure that the problem is not on your side. I guess that further down the call stack, you reach some Win32 API - examine the parameters that the dll's function is passing, trying to see if something "smells". If you have the dll's private symbol you can examine it's function's local variables as well (dv) which can give you some more information.

I hope I gave you a good starting point.