In Visual Studio Express 2013, how can I tell which thread crashed in a minidump?

Question

When I open a minidump I get some basic information about the crash:

I can't tell which thread crashed. Is there some indicator in the interface that shows which thread crashed or other way to determine for sure which thread generated the exception?

I suspect that the debugger will take me to the correct location of the crash when I start debugging (assuming that it was able to load all of the correct symbols, etc.), but it's difficult to know for sure without some kind of confirmation.

@doctorlove Yes, I want the thread id. It helps me to know that I'm looking at the right place and not debugging the wrong thread. — Jason Haslam, Mar 24 '17 at 19:01
I think you can persuade minidump to add the info when the file is create but would have to read the manual — doctorlove, Mar 24 '17 at 20:13

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

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I can't tell for sure regarding the Express edition. Usually there's an actions box where you can start debugging.

If you do that, it will show you the call stack and threads including the thread ID:

However, it might not be available with the Express edition of Visual Studio (source), so I suggest you do the following:

Get a copy of WinDbg, Microsoft's free debugger. Most convenient way is to download from Codemachine.
Install it, then run WinDbg.
Enter the !analyze -v command. It should give you the exception code, call stack and thread ID.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

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answered Apr 04 '17 at 18:47

Thomas Weller

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Thanks! Getting the Threads window to come up (from DEBUG->Windows->Threads) was the hint I needed. I can see that even when I switch to another thread and the yellow arrow indicator moves it leaves an outline arrow on the thread the the debugger is currently stopped in. It wasn't obvious from the toolbar but it is from the window. – Jason Haslam Apr 04 '17 at 19:21

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 04 '17 at 19:30

Just for the sake of completeness, the yellow arrow shows the currently selected thread. It's the outline one that shows the thread where the debugger is currently stopped (or crashed in the case of a dump file):

Also, the last number in the dump file name appears to be the id of the thread that crashed.

In Visual Studio Express 2013, how can I tell which thread crashed in a minidump?

2 Answers2