easy peasy SOASE mods
Published on February 17, 2008 By generalerror In Technical
Now and then Sose crashes and makes a nice minidump file.
Has anyone figured out how to read the things im trying to figure out whats going on and hoping for a clue in the dumps.
I mean i know it is probably vista going nuts as usual but still.


Comments
on Feb 17, 2008
Well, if you have the source code for the project you can see exactly where the crash occurred. Without the source, I hope you are good at reading assembly without a symbol table.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263
on Feb 17, 2008
You're supposed to send the minidump in to support@ironcladgames.com so they can read it.
on Feb 17, 2008
yeah i know i should send it to them to read it but then again i bet they get loads of them all day ^^

Thnx for the quick replys though guys ^^ ill just send them the last one and delete the rest of them since they are 6 meg each
on Feb 17, 2008
heres how they look if you dont have the symbol files, there not exactly impossible to guess what went wrong without the symbol files, im using "debugging tools for windows"
[code]FAULTING_IP:
+fffffffff842daa0
f842daa0 ?? ???

EXCEPTION_RECORD: ffffffff -- (.exr ffffffffffffffff)
ExceptionAddress: f842daa0
ExceptionCode: c0000005 (Access violation)
ExceptionFlags: 00000000
NumberParameters: 2
Parameter[0]: 00000000
Parameter[1]: f842daa0
Attempt to read from address f842daa0

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: APPLICATION_FAULT

PROCESS_NAME: Sins of a Solar Empire.exe

FAULTING_MODULE: 7c900000 ntdll

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 0

ERROR_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - The instruction at "0x%08lx" referenced memory at "0x%08lx". The memory could not be "%s".

READ_ADDRESS: f842daa0

BUGCHECK_STR: ACCESS_VIOLATION

THREAD_ATTRIBUTES:
LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from 0042f8cd to f842daa0

STACK_TEXT:
WARNING: Frame IP not in any known module. Following frames may be wrong.
0012fe4c 0042f8cd 3c23d70a 006b8b68 003f29f0 0xf842daa0
76b44e5b 0f0076b6 0077a785 dca4e800 052bffff Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire+0x2f8cd
00143d83 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 0xf0076b6


FAILED_INSTRUCTION_ADDRESS:
+fffffffff842daa0
f842daa0 ?? ???

POSSIBLE_INVALID_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from 0042f8c8 to 0042daa0

FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: hardware

IMAGE_NAME: hardware

STACK_COMMAND: .ecxr ; kb

BUCKET_ID: CPU_CALL_ERROR

Followup: MachineOwner
---------
*** Possible invalid call from 0042f8c8 ( Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire+0x2f8c8 )
*** Expected target 0042daa0 ( Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire+0x2daa0 )[/code]

i would guess the game trying to use a section of memory that was never available in the first place of the game tried to use the same part of the memory twice.
sometimes you will get a really easy one where it mentions one of the .dll files that are for your graphics card or soundcard and its stupidly obvious what the cause is when that happens.
i always check out game .dmp files just to see if the cause is something on my end that can easily be fixed.
on Feb 17, 2008
yeah this is looking nicely indeed but i gues most crashes are mem issues ill try and see what my dumpfiles tell me thnx
on Feb 17, 2008
if you use debugging tools for windows (which you can download on the MS site somewhere just google search) , click open > crash dump once its loaded and the dump file info loads type "!analyze -V" in the text field without the qoutes.

most of it probably is memory related issues but you can get lucky and it will just be your soundcard or graphics card drivers causing the problem.