Windows Error Reporting
Windows Error Reporting (WER) (codenamed Watson) is a
History
Windows XP
Microsoft first introduced Windows Error Reporting with Windows XP.[1]
Windows Vista
Windows Error Reporting was improved significantly in
Windows 7
The Problem Reports and Solutions
A new app, Problem Steps Recorder (PSR.exe), is available on all builds of Windows 7 and enables the collection of the actions performed by a user while encountering a crash so that testers and developers can reproduce the situation for analysis and debugging.[7]
System design
WER is a
Errors collected by WER clients are sent to the WER service. The WER service employs approximately 60 servers connected to a 65TB storage area network that stores the error report database and a 120TB storage area network that stores up to 6 months of raw CAB files. The service is provisioned to receive and process well over 100 million error reports per day, which is sufficient to survive correlated global events such as
It can also provide the service where it considered the object by the directory server. Information is also stored to collect and associated with the object and resource. Sometimes the directory service the user do not have to remember the physical address of a network resources by providing name and locate the resources.
Buckets
In the Microsoft Windows Error Reporting (WER) system, crash reports are organized according to "buckets". Buckets classify issues by:[9]
- Application Name,
- Application Version,
- Application Build Date,
- Module Name,
- Module Version,
- Module Build Date,
- OS Exception Code[10][11]/System Error Code,[12][13]
- and Module Code Offset.
Ideally, each bucket contains crash reports that are caused by one and only one root cause. However, there are instances where this ideal one-to-one mapping is not the case. First, the heuristics that group failures can result in a single failure's being attributed to multiple buckets; for instance, each time an application with a failure is recompiled, the application will have a new Module Build Date, and resulting failures will then map to multiple buckets. Second, because only certain information about the failure state is factored into the bucketing algorithm, multiple distinct bugs can be mapped to a single bucket; for instance, if an application calls a single function like
Third-party software
Software & hardware manufacturers may access their error reports using Microsoft's
Software and hardware manufacturers can also close the loop with their customers by linking error signatures to Windows Error Reporting Responses. This allows distributing solutions as well as collecting extra information from customers (such as reproducing the steps they took before the crash) and providing them with support links.
Impact on future software
Microsoft has reported that data collected from Windows Error Reporting has made a huge difference in the way software is developed internally. For instance, in 2002,
Privacy concerns and use by the NSA
Although Microsoft has made privacy assurances, they acknowledge that
Older versions of WER send data without encryption; only WER from Windows 8 uses TLS encryption.[27] In March 2014, Microsoft released an update (KB2929733) for Windows Vista, 7 and Server 2008 that encrypts the first stage of WER.[28]
In December 2013, an independent lab found that WER automatically sends information to Microsoft when a new USB device is plugged to the PC.[27]
According to
See also
References
- ^ a b What are WER Services?
- ^ An overview of WER consent settings and corresponding UI behavior
- ^ 0x0 0x0 Solution
- ^ Debugging in the (Very) Large: Ten Years of Implementation and Experience
- ^ WER CACM Award Kinshuman
- ^ WER APIs
- ^ Windows Error Reporting Problem Steps Recorder
- ^ Debugging in the (Very) Large: Ten Years of Implementation and Experience
- ^ How WER collects and classifies error reports
- ^ "NTSTATUS values". Microsoft. Retrieved 2015-06-08.
- ^ "Bug Check Code Reference". Microsoft. Retrieved 2015-06-08.
- ^ "System Error Codes (Windows)". Microsoft. Retrieved 2015-06-08.
- ^ "HRESULT Values". Microsoft. Retrieved 2015-06-08.
- ^ MSDN Blogs > WER Services > The only thing constant is change – Part 1
- ^ "SysDev (was Winqual) website". Archived from the original on 2018-08-03. Retrieved 2012-11-07.
- ^ Update a code signing certificate
- ^ Introducing Windows Error Reporting
- ^ WinQual Registration Head Aches
- ^ Microsoft Support Forum: WER with Thawte authenticode signed app
- ^ The Old New Thing: How can a company get access to Windows Error Reporting data?
- ^ The great digital certificate ripoff?
- ^ Steve Ballmer's letter: Connecting to customers
- ^ Markoff, John (9 October 2006). "A Challenge for Exterminators (Published 2006)". The New York Times.
- ^ "Microsoft Privacy Statement for Error Reporting". Archived from the original on 2012-10-10. Retrieved 2007-10-07.
- ^ Description of the end user privacy policy in application error reporting when you are using Office
- ^ Bekker, Scott (3 October 2002). "Microsoft Error Reporting Drives Bug Fixing Efforts". Redmond Partner Channel. 1105 Redmond Media Group.
- ^ a b "Are Your Windows Error Reports Leaking Data?". Websense Security Labs. 29 Dec 2013. Retrieved 4 January 2014.
- ^ "The first stage of the WER protocol is not SSL encrypted in Windows". Microsoft. 11 March 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2015.
- ^ Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit