Windows Dev Center Reports Update

Hello. I’d like to provide some information on some changes available next month with the Dev Center Reports.

As mentioned in “The only thing constant is change” blog, user mode reports use the Failure based approach. When symbols are not available (the most common scenario) this can sometimes make it difficult to determine the root cause of an issue. In these cases, Failures with the same exception code, problem class and module are all grouped into failure with !unknown instead of the function name.

To help mitigate this issue the CABs will be broken down by an Offset grouping, with the Offset value and the percentage of overall CABs that have that value. The Offset is the place in the code where the failure occurred and it helps determine the root cause of a set of issues.  One item to keep in mind is that a file update can cause the Offset to move, so symbols are almost always the best way to identify issues.

Up to 10 CABs per Offset will be available and each Failure can show up to 10 Offsets.  This means that up to 100 CABs could be provided per Failure. Up to now, only 10 CABs are available per Failure. With the combination of more CABs and an Offset breakout, more debugging information will be available per Failure.

Each Failure will show an Offset breakout per CAB set, such as the below:

Each user mode report type will provide an Offset breakout per Failure including:

1) Company Hotlist – The top 10 Failures are provided across all mappings

2) Product Group summary – Provides top 10 Failures across all product mappings in a product group. Each of the product groups provide a per product drill down

3) Product Summary – Provides top 10 Failures for product not in a product group.  There is also a per product drill down providing more Failures

 

Based on feedback – we’re are also making the following changes with the CAB section of the report:

• For both user and kernel Failures, Full or Heap dumps will be prioritized over Mini dumps
• The OS version will be provided. This will be at an OS and Service Pack level, e.g. Windows 7 (SP1)
• For User Mode reports the File Version will be displayed, for Kernel Mode reports, the Driver Version
• For the Driver Summary Report, the Version Grouping will use a version sort rather than a string sort

 

Example of Kernel Mode Changes. The OS Version and Driver Version are new fields in the CAB section:

 

Example of User Mode Changes. CAB are broken down by an Offset group. OS Version and File Version are new fields in the CAB section:

 

With the report changes, this means some changes to the feed. The next blog will go over the feed changes in detail……