About crash dump files to debug crashed or non-responsive programs or services (Q809)

While Umetrics software products are engineered with quality and robustness in mind, it can happen that they crash or hang. In these cases a dump file of the software can be useful for Umetrics support so that we can debug it to determine where the crash occurred or what the software was doing when it hung.

Crash dumps for offline software MODDE, SIMCA

In most cases, when a Umetrics Suite software crashes, a dump file is created automatically. A message is displayed showing the location of the dump file. 

Crash dumps for SIMCA-online server

SIMCA-online server is a service and cannot display a message. Instead it shows the dump file location in the server log file as “The server crashed. ” with the full path to the dump-file. Dump files are saved in the Database Directory of the server. .  Learn more about server log files in Making use of SIMCA®-online server logging for finding problems (Q742) (sartorius.com)

How to manually create a dump file if instructed by support

You can also create a dump file manually, for example if a program is non-responsive. Follow these steps;

1. Launch Task Manager (by for example pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc).
2. Click to show more details, and navigate to the Details-tab listing all running processes.
3. Locate the the process , for example SIMCA.EXE, right-click on it and click Create Dump File.

This creates the dump file, and you will see its location in the message that comes up. 

Share the dump files with support for analysis

A crash dump is of little use without internal knowledge about the products. For this reason you need to send the file to support for further analysis. Also provide information if the crash is caused by certain actions. For SIMCA-online, also provide copies of the server log files.