Method and system for reporting a program failure

• US 6,629,267 B1
• Filed: 05/15/2000
• Issued: 09/30/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 05/15/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Oosterhof, E. Peter, Glerum, Kirk A., Ruhlen, Matthew J., LeVine, Eric A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Beausoliel, Robert
• Assistant Examiner(s): Wilson, Yolanda L.
• Application Number:
  US09/571,629
• Time in Patent Office: 1,233 Days
• Field of Search: 714/38, 714/57, 714/48, 714/25, 714/26, 714/46, 714/47
• US Class Current: 714/38.11
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0715 in a system implementing multitasking multitasking per se G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0787 Storage of error reports, e.g. persistent data storage, storage using memory protection

Abstract

Method and system for reporting program failures. The system extracts information about a failure in a program module, such as the location of the failure, and establishes communication with a repository, such as a server. The information about the failure may be used to search the repository to determine whether the particular bug that caused the failure has already been fixed. If so, then the system assists the user in downloading the fix (such as by pointing the user to a particular website for downloading a service release). If a particular failure has not been diagnosed and corrected, then additional relevant information from the user'"'"'s computer may be uploaded to the repository to provide the developers of the program module enough information about the failure to diagnose the bug and fix it (in a service release or in a later version of the program module).

Claims

1. A method for reporting a failure in an application program module, the method comprising the steps of:

determining there is a failure in the application program module;

in response to a determination that there is a failure in the application program module, determining a location of the failure;

transmitting the location of the failure to a repository;

comparing the location of the failure to a plurality of prior reported failures stored in the repository;

if the location of the failure matches at least one of prior reported failures, then determining whether there is a request for additional data stored in association with the at least one of the prior reported failures; and

if so, then locating the requested additional data in the application program module and transmitting the requested additional data to the repository.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the failure is a crash of the application program module.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the failure is a failure during set-up of the application program module.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

prior to determining a location of the failure, displaying a dialog box requesting instructions from a user regarding whether to report the failure to the repository; and

receiving instructions from the user to report the failure to the repository.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the repository is a remote server.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of:

storing the additional data in association with the at least one of the prior reported failures.

7. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing the steps recited in claim 1.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the additional data comprises a minidump.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the additional data comprises a minidump and a log file of prior activity of the application program.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of:

determining whether there is a fix to the failure stored in association with the at least one of the prior reported failures; and

if so, then transmitting the fix to the application program module.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

determining whether there is a fix to the failure stored in association with the at least one of the prior reported failures; and

if so, then transmitting a location of the fix to the application program module.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

if the location of the failure does not match at least one of prior reported failures, then storing a new entry in the prior reported failures.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the new entry comprises the location of the location of the failure.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein the location comprises an instruction in a setup routine that leads to a setup failure.

15. A system for reporting a failure in an application program module on a user'"'"'s computer comprising:

a repository for storing information for a plurality of prior reported failures;

a failure reporting executable residing on the user'"'"'s computer for communicating a failure detected in the application program module to the repository and for determining, based on the detected failure and the information stored in the repository, whether to request additional information associated with at least one of the plurality of prior reported failures from the application program module; and

an exception filter residing on the user'"'"'s computer for executing the failure reporting executable upon detection of the failure in the application program module.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the repository is a remote server and wherein the failure reporting executable communicates with the remote server using a web browser program module residing on the user'"'"'s computer.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the repository is a local server and wherein the failure reporting executable communicates with the local server via an Intranet connection.