Catching EngineExecutionException - c#

I have an application containing both managed and native code. The application currently has an unhandled exception filter, set via SetUnhandledExceptionFilter, which catches any critical errors, generates a minidump, records various application parameters, and exits the program.
The unhandled exception handler does not catch an EngineExecutionException which occurs in the .NET runtime. We suspect the problem is memory corruption caused by the native portion of the application.
The problem is, when the exception occurs, the application just exits without a trace. We'd like to record a minidump when this happens. Does anyone know how our application can install a handler capable of catching this?

AFAIK this exception is not catchable on the managed side of things (at least not in .NET 4).
One way to "catch" it would be to create a (native) custom starter/loader for your application which loads the .NET runtime - this custom starter can install an exception handler on the native side of .NET runtime.
Reference links:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163567.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms164336.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd380851.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms231221.aspx

Related

Prevent app from crashing

I've a C# WPF application that throws following error message and crashes:
System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected
memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
I then added following exception handlers in the code. And also added following line of code in the start of the method which was throwing above exception.
throw new System.AccessViolationException();
Exception handlers are now getting executed on clicking the app exe on my local machine when above exception occurs, but the app still crashes. I need to be able to prevent the app from crashing. Not sure how do I do that?
application.DispatcherUnhandledException += ApplicationDispatcherUnhandledException;
TaskScheduler.UnobservedTaskException += TaskScheduler_UnobservedTaskException;
AppDomain currentAppDomain = AppDomain.CurrentDomain;
currentAppDomain.UnhandledException += new UnhandledExceptionEventHandler
(UnhandledExceptionHandler);
Thanks.
You need to identify what part of code is throwing that exception. I bet it is some external unmanged library.
If you cannot repair that library, you can follow instructions on MSDN:
AccessViolationException
AccessViolationException and try/catch blocks
Starting with the .NET Framework 4, AccessViolationException
exceptions thrown by the common language runtime are not handled by
the catch statement in a structured exception handler if the exception
occurs outside of the memory reserved by the common language runtime.
To handle such an AccessViolationException exception, you should apply
the HandleProcessCorruptedStateExceptionsAttribute attribute to the
method in which the exception is thrown. This change does not affect
AccessViolationException exceptions thrown by user code, which can
continue to be caught by a catch statement. For code written for
previous versions of the .NET Framework that you want to recompile and
run without modification on the .NET Framework 4, you can add the
element to your app's
configuration file. Note that you can also receive notification of the
exceptions if you have defined a handler for the
AppDomain.FirstChanceException or AppDomain.UnhandledException event.

Exception control when release an application?

Possibly an obvious question to some but couldn't find a duplicate.
I'm packaging the final version of a Windows Forms solution I've been working on and am getting it ready for online distribution. What are the best practices when doing so? We've already had some trouble with packaging the installation file and have run into hurdles to test the program on different PCs, both 32 and 64-bit included.
More specifically, should "throw;" commands be commented out or left in the final release? Would this expose any of the inner workings of the solution itself?
Released application should not crash when exception occurs. You will want to inform the user, something went wrong and log your exception, but you do not want to crash! Informing user should be done in a friendly manner and not just by putting exception.ToString() into the message box.
It is a good practice to add Application.ThreadException or AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException handlers to handle all exceptions in your Application. How exactly to do that, is answered in the following thread: Catch Application Exceptions in a Windows Forms Application
However, make sure that your application survives in a usable state, i.e. handle exceptions in a proper way for your application.
I usually add a preprocessor directive for handling exceptions on the application level, since I want them to trow while debugging. For example:
#if !DEBUG
Application.ThreadException += new ThreadExceptionEventHandler(MyHandler);
#endif
It should also be mentioned, that if you have code pieces where you anticipate that Exception might occur, such as network communication error, you should handle those pieces explicitly. What I am saying is, we should not completely forget about exception handling, just because we configured an unhandled exception handler on the application level.
Keep all of your exception handling intact.
Add an event to the starting form in the application, attaching to the Application.UnhandledException event. This will fire if an exception propogates up the stack.
This is the point to inform the user that the application has crashed. Log the error here and then abort gracefully.
Your point about revealing internals, thats up to you to decide. You can obfuscate the source code if you wish, but if you are releasing in Release build mode, and you are not providing the .PDB, then this is the first step.
Ultimately, the DLL / EXE can be decompiled anyway, so its up to you. Debug mode will reveal a lot more than Release mode, but not much more.
Ideally, you should be catching anything that's thrown higher with throw;. Carefully check your code and try to ensure that thrown exceptions are dealt with appropriately. Unhandled exceptions are logged - you can see this information in the Windows Event Viewer. Depending on what details you put in them, unhandled exceptions could give clues as to the inner workings of your application. However, I would suggest that unhandled exceptions are a poor source of information, and that anyone who wanted to know how your application worked could simply disassemble it, unless you've obfuscated it.
Some exceptions cannot be caught by surrounding code with try/catch blocks, so your application should also implement an unhandled exception handler. This gives you the opportunity to show the user an error message and do something with the exception - log it, send it to support, discard it, etc.

How to catch absolutely all exceptions / errors

I have a windows service application, running under WinXPe, which sometimes fails with an error and displays an message box to the user:
"The instruction at “”
referenced memory at “0x00000000”. The
memory could not be “read.” Press OK
to exit the program
If the user clicks "Ok" the service is restarting.
I have tried to catch all unhandled exceptions with registering a eventhandler at AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException
in the handler I log the exception details and exit the application.
But the error I mentioned above is NOT handled from "UnhandledException".
The application is heavily multi threaded, using System.Threading.Timer and System.Threading.Thread. And it's using some third party libs, one of these libs are using native interop, I have no source of the native lib.
I tried to point out the error with an debugger attached, but the error doesn't show up ;)
The application has to run several days before the error occurs.
I need a way to handle such a error.
Thanks
See Vectored Exception Handling
This is part of windows SEH (Structured Exception Handling) and IIRC here is precious few errors that you could not at least be notified of in such a case.
You will probably want to write any handling code directly to the native WIN32 API (in unsafe/unmanaged code) and using pre-allocated (static?) buffers only, because there will be many things unreliable at that moment in time.
Beware of/stay away from threading, locking primitives, memory allocations, disk IO; preferrably use Windows default API's to, e.g. restart the process or produce a minidump and things like that
That error is not a managed exception. It's a lower level memory access violation. Essentially a NULL pointer access in native code.
This is something you're supposed to be completely protect from in managed code, so it's likely one of your native libraries or the way you're using them. If the error only appears after a few days of execution, you might be best off first going through any native library calls, checking their signatures and making sure you pass them data that makes sense.

How to catch exceptions from another program (for logging)?

I am working on a tool that monitors a number of applications and ensures they are always running and in a clean state. Some of these applications have unhandled exceptions which do occur periodically and present the 'send crash report' window. I do not have the source code to these applications.
Is there any mechanism I could use to catch the exceptions, or simply identify their exception type, as well as identify the application's main executable file that threw the exception.
I'm not trying to do anything crazy like catch and handle it on the applications behalf, I'm simply trying to capture the exception type, log it and then restart the application.
Trapping unhandled exceptions requires calling SetUnhandledExceptionFilter() in the process. That's going to be difficult to do if you don't have source code, although it is technically possible by injecting a DLL into the process. This however cannot be done with managed code, you can't get the CLR initialized properly.
The default unhandled exception handler that Windows installs will always run WerFault.exe, the Windows Error Reporting tool. That can be turned off but that's a system setting. Expecting your user or admin to do this is not realistic. Only after WER runs will the JIT debugger get a shot at it.
I recommend a simpler approach, one that's also much more selective. Use the Process class to get the program you're interested in protecting started. When the Exited event fires, use the ExitCode property to find out how it terminated. Any negative value is a sure sign that the process died on an unhandled exception, the exit code matches the exception code. You can use the EventLog class to read the event message that WER writes to the Windows event log. And you can restart it the same way you got it started.
Without modifying the source of the application or injecting a DLL into the process I do not believe this is possible in a reliable fashion. What you're attempting to do is inspect type information across a process boundary. This is not easy to achieve for a number of reasons
Getting the name of the exception implies executing code in the target process. The name can be generated a number of ways (.ToString, or .GetType().Name) but all involve executing some method
You want to do this after the application has already crashed and hence may be in a very bad state. Consider trying to execute code if memory was corrupted (perhaps even corrupting the in memory definitions of the type).
The crash could occur in native code and not involve any managed data
If you want to monitor application crashes system wide, you can register yourself as a just-in-time debugger. You can edit the registry to specify which debugger to run when an application crashes. The example they give is Doctor Watson, but it could be your application instead.

Catching an Unhandled Exception Raised by an Unmanaged Sub-Process

Using C#'s System.Diagnostics.Process object, I start an unmanaged exe, that later starts yet another unmanaged exe.
The 2nd exe is causing an unhandled-exception that I'd like my application to ignore, but can't seem to.
I'm using a try/catch statement when I start the first process, but it doesn't seem to catch the exception raised by the 2nd process. When the exception occurs, the just-in-time debugger notifies me and halts my application until I manually click "yes" I want to debug or "no". Then my application proceeds.
The JIT debugger doesn't have source code for the 2ndprocess.exe that is throwing the exception. So, it doesn't tell me what the exception is. I don't really care what the exception is, I just want to know how to catch it and ignore it so my application doesn't get halted by it. By the time the exception occurs, the work is done anyway.
Can anyone offer some insight?
You should be properly handling the exception in the second executable. Your main program won't catch the exception because it isn't throwing one, it is executing something that is.
Edit:
Do you have access to the source of the second process (the one throwing the exception)? Your application shouldn't ever just crash. If the exceptional case gets handled correctly in the second process, you won't have this problem in your primary application.
Edit2:
Since you have access to the source (open source) I recommend you fix the bug. This will help you in two ways:
1) Your program will finally work.
2) You can say you contributed to an open source project.
And, as a special bonus, you get to help out a project you use frequently. Win/Win
Since you are using process.start to actually launch the application, the application creates a separate application domain. Capturing the exception from that application is not something that I believe will be possible, since more than likely the JIT dialog is coming up due to that failed process.
Although not a solution you could stop the dialog if needed, but that has issues of its own.

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