Windows Error Reporting

Windows Error Reporting (WER) (codenamed Watson) is a crash reporting technology introduced by Microsoft with Windows XP and included in later Windows versions and Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0. Not to be confused with the Dr. Watson debugging tool which left the memory dump on the user's local machine, Windows Error Reporting collects and offers to send post-error debug information (a memory dump) using the Internet to the Microsoft or stops responding on a user's desktop. No data is sent without the user's consent. When a dump (or other error signature information) reaches the Microsoft server, it is analyzed and a solution is sent back to the user when one is available. Solutions are served using Windows Error Reporting Responses. Windows Error Reporting runs as a Windows service and can optionally be entirely disabled. If Windows Error Reporting itself crashes, then an error report that the original crashed process produced cannot be sent at all. Kinshuman is the original designer of Windows Error Reporting in Vista which is the same design and implementation that is present in current Windows versions.

Microsoft first introduced Windows Error Reporting with Windows XP.

Windows Error Reporting was improved significantly in Windows Vista. Most importantly a new set of public APIs have been created for reporting failures other than application crashes and hangs. Developers can create custom reports and customize the reporting user interface. The new APIs are documented in MSDN. The architecture of Windows Error Reporting has been revamped with a focus on reliability and user experience. WER can now report errors even when the process is in a very bad state for example if the process has encountered stack exhaustions, PEB/TEB corruptions, heap corruptions, etc. In earlier OSs prior to Windows Vista, the process usually terminated silently without generating an error report in these conditions. A new Control Panel applet, "Problem Reports and Solutions" was also introduced, keeping a record of system and application errors and issues, as well as presenting probable solutions to problems.

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