The Moth

Came across this on an internal email thread and thought it would be useful to share, in case you run into a VS crash and wish to collect the information needed by Microsoft support.

1. Start 2 instances of Visual Studio 2010 (devenv.exe).
2. In the first one select Tools -> Attach to Process.
3. Click the Select button for “Attach to:” and select Managed and Native.
4. Select the other devenv from the list and click Attach.
5. Switch to the other devenv.
6. Load your solution and try to reproduce the crash.
7. When you hit the crash the debugger should automatically break.
8. Select Debug -> Save Dump As, then set the type to minidump with heap and save the file to a location with lot’s of space.

Note: If you are running the VB profile you will not see the Save Dump As menu item. To add this menu item:
a. Select Tools -> Customize
b. Select the Commands tab
c. Select Debug from the “Menu bar” dropdown
d. Click “Add Command…”
e. Select Debug from the Categories list.
f. Find the “Save Dump As” entry in the Commands window.
g. Click OK (the “Save Dump As…” command is added to the top of the Debug menu).
h. Click “Close”