Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] error on Win2000

Note: This archive is from the project's previous web site, ethereal.com. This list is no longer active.

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 13:59:33 -0700 (PDT)
> I got the following, hopelessly vague, error message the other day on
> a Win2000 box.  (To be fair the message does not seem to be coming
> from ethereal directly.

It isn't.  It's generated by some part of W2K, as far as I know -
perhaps by the Win32 subsystem process.

I'm curious whether

> ethereal.exe has generated errors and will be closed by windows.

is Windows 2000's more "user friendly" form of the dialog box that
earlier versions of NT used when a program got an unhandled exception -
e.g., if it dereferenced a null pointer.

On NT 4.0, a program that dereferences a null pointer (or makes other
illegal memory references) dies with a message box that mentions all
sorts of things that might be Too Much Information for naive computer
users.  I don't know whether NT 5.0^H^H^H^H^H^HWindows 2000 replaced
that with a less informative, and thus less terrifying, message or not.

> Any idea where this error log was created?

Try opening the Event Viewer (pop up the Start menu, go to Programs, go
to Administrative Tools, and go to Event Viewer - you might have to
click on the "please show me the whole damn menu" arrows to get that),
select the Application Log, and look for messages the source of which is
"DrWatson".

I have, for example, one of those in my message log saying, in the
Description field:

	The application, netsc_us.exe, generated an application error
	The error occurred on 01/11/2001 @ 20:54:42.742 The exception
	generated was c0000005 at address 00441163
	(lo_FreeDocumentEmbedListData)

(ooh, *quelle surprise*, Netscape dumped core!  Gosh, that almost
*never* happens...).

The "View" menu in the Event Viewer has a "Filter" item; you can choose
"DrWatson" in the "Event source:" combo box, and it'll limit the display
to messages from Dr. Watson.