Comments on: Why did Vista Crash?

By: Teambond

Teambond — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:19:12 +0000

Thanks so much. Was getting the “COM delegate” crash. Tracked down pvmjpg21.dll using process explorer (another great tool). Didn’t end up doing debug but your explanation was the first one that actually made sense and worked.

By: Cruise Lines List

Cruise Lines List — Wed, 11 May 2011 17:28:41 +0000

Oh dear, i don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the moment! I have been trying to find a fix for two weeks as Vista kept crashing on my laptop. I have taken my laptop to two different places, and one said he had no idea, the other said he had fixed it but then it crashed again.

No i have come across your very helpful article and i followed your steps and it seems to have worked perfectly!

Thanks you!

By: Xavier Dereppe

Xavier Dereppe — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:30:44 +0000

Hello,
I came across your article, when looking for a solution to Vista/movie Maker 6.0 crashing when importing AVI files into Timeline.

I have downloaded without problem version 6.11.1.404 (March 27, 2009) of the Debugging Tool for Windows (your step 1) but when trying to apply your step 2 (enabling it as the Default debugger, I keep getting “The system cannot find the path specified” when I type (in command prompt): cd “c:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows” (without or with quotes “).
Any suggestion? Thank you. Xavier/Belgium

By: Mick West

Mick West — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:45:29 +0000

That sounds like a crash at an even lower level than windbg can catch. The most likely thing there would be a hardware driver. Try disconnecting everything to try narrow it down. If possible, try swapping graphics cards.

By: Nick M

Nick M — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:38:26 +0000

Hi,

I have installed windbg ok, but when Vista freezes on my machine, it does not create a dump file (in fact it does nothing – i cannot click anything on screen and there is no disk activity) so next time i reboot and run windbg, there is nothing to debug…

any thoughts/advice please?
I can’t figure out the trigger and it’s v annoying as it freezes at the slightest load.

best, Nick

By: pvmjpg21.dll crashes the shell | keyongtech

pvmjpg21.dll crashes the shell | keyongtech — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:07:15 +0000

[...] right group for this or not – hopefully > someone has seen this already. Take a gander here: http://mickwest.com/2007/09/01/why-did-vista-crash/ Yes, it says Vista and this is an XP newsgroup but you might want to look there regardless. The [...]

By: Mick West

Mick West — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 02:22:18 +0000

Sounds like you need to run it as administrator. Which means you need to open an administrator command prompt to run the command.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 13:49:22 +0000

hi,

I can’t get trough the prompt part. when i want to `enable it as the default debugger`, i get the next message: Windbg was not successfully installed as the default postmortem debugger. This operation requires administrative privileges. What should i do. Almost all my programs are crashing.

By: Mick West

Mick West — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:42:32 +0000

Because they fail. Really, Microsoft has their priorities all wrong – they are run by committee, and it shows in Windows.

I only continue to use them because I have Windows software that would be expensive to replace.

By: Martin Leonard

Martin Leonard — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:58:51 +0000

Thanks so much. I would never have found the bug otherwise. Why o why do they not provide the information on a detail button when the damn thing crashes?