PC101-Personal
Computer 101
What the heck
is Dr. Watson and how does it help with system crashes?
Dr
Watson is an MS® utility for helping troubleshoot
system/application crashes.
It is a little known utility but can give you
allot of information that
you would not otherwise find, even in the system event logs.
You can also cut-and-paste information from the crash logs to an email
to the vendor for analysis.
To run Dr Watson, double click on the following file:
C:\Windows\system32\drwtsn32.exe
I suggest you make a
shortcut for this file (right-click
on file, select Create
Shortcut), and then move that shortcut file to your Accessories / System
Tools folder so it can easily be opened in the future.
Now that
you've open the utility you can see that it has lots of info
on any application crashes you may have already had (bottom window: Application Errors).
If you have an dumps listed in this window, you can highlight them
(left-click) and then select View to see
the whole log file on the application crash.
Displaying
suggested
utility
settings
You may notice at the top that I have used the Browse option
for the Wave File entry to select a sound file from the C:\Windows\Media\ directory
and 
checked the box for sound
notification when an application crash is detected and logged.
For more information on the Dr. Watson utility, search in the Start / Help and
Support option for it.
TIP:
You may or may not have the Windows Support
Tool called Dump Check on your
system (depending on whether the MS Support Tools were
installed). This program verifies any system dumps and gives
basic information about any crashes (if the collection of system crash
dumps are inabled on your computer). Check under Program Files for Support
Tools, and if the folder is there you probably have the dump
check program: dumpchk.exe. This program needs to be run
in a command prompt window and you need to specify the dump file you
want to analyze (located in a folder in the /Windows
folder). This program will probably only be of use to any
technician troubleshooting system crashes on your machine.
Got
questions you would like answered? Yes
keoni@isp.com