Sometimes on windows xp (including like five minutes ago) one of my programs will have an error. And it will just say “xyz program has encountered an error and has to shut down. would you like to send an error report?” or something to that effect.
In some of those cases, I’d really like to figure out what the actual error is so that I can go about trying to fix it. Like right now, I’m trying to install a game and I get that from installshield every time I try. It’s very annoying.
Only I can’t figure out how to find the specific error from the information I’m given. If I click “view contents of error report” there’s a lot of stuff at the top that I don’t really understand, but I think one of those things may be the thing I should be looking for.
It says:
AppName:
AppVer:
ModName:
ModVer:
Offset:
And then when I click “view technical information about the error report” I get a LOT of information I don’t understand.
So how do I figure out what to google?
Alternatively, is there any way to install things without using installshield? This is driving me crazy.
Only a guess but you could try to find the error in the event log and look up the event ID on eventid.net (right-click My Computer, Manage, Event Viewer, System).
You could try to disable error reporting, I have seen it cause failures itself in the past (right-click My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Error Reporting, Disable Error Reporting and don’t notify me when critical errors occur).
Otherwise post the error logs / codes, there may be a clue or two in there.
faulting application: _ins5576._mp, version 5.53.186.0 (this, I assume, is installshield or some part of it)
faulting module: kernel32.dll, version 5.1.2600.5781 (this may be what I’m supposed to look up. It has something to do with memory, but there’s a lot of information)
fault address: 0x000f5e4f (no idea about this one)
turning off error reporting didn’t work in this case, so I turned it back on.
Specifically, what’s happening is I click on “setup” and it loads really quickly to 99% and then I get the “installshield has encountered a problem and has to close” message. And then it closes.
I’ve installed other things in the meantime, so it seems to be a problem with just this game. But I really wanted this stupid game, so I’m not giving up yet.
Two possibilities: turn off NX bit protection (right-click My Computer, Properties, Advanced, and it’s in there somewhere), and turn off your virus-checker.
As for the error message itself, we need different information. In the Event Log you’ll see that every error has a number attached (e.g. 1001) and it’s that number that you plug into EventID.Net.
oh… it says event 1000 which I thought might be pretty meaningless/general. I looked it up on eventid and it says
“source: application error
type: error:
description: Faulting application <application name>, version <version number>, faulting module <module name>, version <version number>, fault address <hex address>.”
Under that, there are a lot of people talking about a lot of different applications (but, infuriatingly, not installshield. argh.)
Who supports this app? This is more their problem than theirs. End users arent expected to do their own debugging and analyze memory dumps. I would report this to whoever sold you the software.