Howto: Take a dump in Visual Studio

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When an application crashes, the user may only have Visual Studio on the box.  When the crash occurs, the developer may be prompted to see if they wish to debug the appliction.  If they can choose Visual Studio, then they can save the dump to a file which can be looked at with windbg later.

  1) On the Debug menu, click Save Dump As.

  2) In the Save Dump As dialog box, select Minidump or Minidump with Heap from the Save as type list box.
     Note: You really should go for the Minidump with heap at least.

  3) Minidump is the default dump format used by Visual Studio 2005. Minidump with Heap provides
     more information, but also takes up more space. For more information, see Dump Requirements
     and Limitations.

  4) Use the Navigation controls to choose a save location.

  6) Click Save.