Actually, NAV should never crash, but sometimes there are circumstances that cause a crash of one of the NAV processes or services. For the user and the administrator, it is usually not clear why a component crashes. Most of the time the application event log does not show enough information to determine root causes of the crash.
A “crash dump” provides very good information about the module and code which caused the crash. The crash dumps can be analyzed by Microsoft Dynamics NAV support and help a lot to find the problem.
With the “Debug Diagnostic Tool v1.1. 2” it is very easy to create the crash dump files in case of a crash.
The tool can be downloaded under the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26798
Note: If the operating system is not configured for “en-us” for region and language, then the following steps are necessary to install the Debug Diagnostic
Tool v1.2:
- Create a local group named “Users” (via Control Panel-> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Local users and groups).
- Add yourself to this local group.
- Grant full access to this group to DebugDiag installation folder.
- Install DebugDiag.
- You will get an error removing the backup files!
- During this error – access the install directory (as administrator) while the installation is running and the error is shown.
- Copy the files to another directory (e.g. C:\Temp\DebugDiagSave).
- Complete the registration (failed – files deleted).
- Create the folder DebugDiag again on c:\Program Files (if you use x64 or the program folder for x86).
- Copy the files back to the installation directory.
- Run the installation once again.
- Run Register.bat from the installation folder to register all COM objects.
After you install and run the application, you are welcomed by the “Rule Wizard.”
For the crash dump creation, you choose Crash and then choose the Next button. Following is the selection of what you would like to check. For NAV, it is necessary to select “a specific process”:
The next selection window shows all processes. Here, you can select, for example, “Microsoft.Dynamics.NAV.Client.exe”.
With “Advanced Configuration” it now possible to set the granularity of process monitoring.
The next screen shows the path where the crash dump is saved. You must select a hard disk with enough capacity. Crash dumps can be very large in some circumstances (e.g. if you selected “Full Userdump” in the “Advanced Configuration” screen).
In a last step the rule must be activated:
Once the created rule was activated, “Debug Diag” monitors the configured process.
In case of a crash, “Debug Diag” creates now the necessary .dmp files in the specified folder and additional log files in the installation folder of “Debug Diag” (e.g. “C:\Program Files\DebugDiag\Logs”).
I hope the described steps help you to create the important crash dump information.
Frank Wurzel
Microsoft Dynamics Germany