ASP.NET Tips: DumpAllExceptions output changes

The first time you run !DumpAllExceptions you will see it print out one full exception for each type of exception that is in the dump.  This will include the message and the callstack of the exception.  For example:

Any time after that, if you run the same command, there is a chance that it will print out something different, like:

In this example, you can tell they are different because of the InnerException address.  Sometimes it will be more obvious then this.

What is happening here?  Well when the list of exceptions is built, the first time through, we will print out one exception that is found in the dump as an example of that type of exception.  But the list isn’t sorted yet.  When you run it again, we will sort the list and so the one that we pull out to print may be a different one.

This is just meant to give you an idea of what these exceptions may be.  If you want to really look into them, you can use the -v switch which will print out all of the exceptions instead of grouping them by exception type.