After reading about crashes I decided that a long time peeve of mine is Windows reports for app crashes/hangs and Windows BSODs (thankfully truly rare in W7).

The stuff you get in W7: “ProgX.exe has stopped working. Windows can check for a solution to the problem. Check online? Close the program. and you can get “details”.

WinCrashReport does a good deal more. It won’t solve the problem, but it will give you a report with good options, (check the link) even if the app crashing isn’t named.

“Every crash report created by WinCrashReport contains the following sections:

• General Exception Information: Provides general information about the crash, including the date/time that the report was generated, the full path of the crashed application, the process/thread ID that caused the crash, product name/version/company of the crashed application, crash address, exception code, exception description, and exception parameters.
• Strings in the stack: Provides a list of all strings (Ascii and Unicode) found in the stack of the crashed application. Looking at these strings may give you a clue for locating the the cause of the crash.
• Call Stack (Method 1 + Method 2): Provides the call stack of the crashed application. WinCrashReport uses 2 different methods to locate the calls made by the application just before the crash.
• Processor Registers: Provides the values of common processor registers at the momemnt of the crash. If a processor register points to a memory address, WinCrashReport will display the content of the memory address.
• Modules List: Provides the list of all DLLs loaded into the crashed application. For every loaded module, the following information is displayed: module name, address range, module size, product name, product version, file version ,file description, company name, file size, file modified time, and full path of the dll.
• All Threads: Provides the list of all running threads in the crashed application. For every thread, the following information is displayed: Thread ID, start address, stack base, stack size, context switch count, status, priority, creation time, user time, and kernel time.
• Full Stack Data: Provides the list of all values found in the crashed application, at the moment of the crash.” – NirSoft

It comes in different languages, is an .exe so it isn’t installed, and is fully portable.

System Requirements And Limitations

• This utility work on any version of Windows, starting from Windows 2000 and up to Windows 8.
• If the crashed application is 32-bit, you should use the 32-bit version of WinCrashReport. If the crashed application is 64-bit, you should use the 64-bit version of WinCrashReport.
• On Windows 7/2008/Vista/8: If the crashed application is running with administrator privilege, you must execute WinCrashReport with 'Run As Administrator' in order to get the crash report about this application.
• in some circumstances, a program may crash without displaying any crash window (The program simply disappears from the screen), in these cases, WinCrashReport won't be able the create a crash report. – NirSoft

That’s for apps…now, if your Windows is crashing and you’re getting BSODs, I’d recommend NirSoft’s BlueScreenView. Just remember, that could be a sign of a failing HDD, and not necessarily a Windows problem.

If your app is ‘hanging’, I’d give WhatIsHang a shot.

So, a “Threefer”, today. And…they’re all free. No disclaimer this time…these utilities are just the bee’s knees.