Dr Watsons Post Mortem Debugger?

[maddog_2020]

WTF is this? My cpu will freeze for about 5 seconds then that pops up saying that "Dr Watsons Post Mortem Debugger has encountered a problem and needs to close" and then everything freezes. That gets very annoying after a few times. Is there a way to get rid of this?

[OTTODAD]

Hi Chad !

Do a GOOGLE for "Dr Watsons Post Mortem Debugger" including the quotes and read all about it ! ;)

O t t o

[Popeye]

I googled this just for the hell of it, and all I saw was links to a bunch of forums where a) people were asking the same thing, or b) people were advising the downloading and installing of a bunch of anti-spyware tools without answering the "what is it and why is it happening" part.

I do know "Dr. Watson" was a Windows diagnosis and debugging feature that I saw alot with WinNT, an operating system that really wasn't very friendly to alot of cheaply written applications designed for Win 95/98. It came up alot on software compatibility bugs. Dont know if this is a normal occurrence, or is happening because something has got ahold of your machine. I haven't seen it in WinXP myself yet.

[zbobg]

DrWatson is just an error reporting program (a debugger), some other problem happened in your computer which resulted in a request to run DrWatson. Only some programs (usually old ones) are configured to invoke the DrWatson program. DrWatson doesn't run very well in current versions on Windows (it's an old program) so it is very likely to fail itself. In any case, even if DrWatson runs successfully the reports it produces are of questionable value. If you send them to Microsoft do you think they'll look at them?

You can easily disable DrWatson by renaming this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/AeDebug

Rename it to something like _AeDebug_, including the underscores, that should prevent it from running. It will NOT fix the problem that caused DrWatson to run in the first place, you may still have errors happen in Windows but the DrWatson program won't run.

[OTTODAD]

Chad has not told us which version of Windows he has installed.

If it is VISTA then there is no trace of Watson to be found anywhere !

The phrase Post Mortem, meaning a procedure performed after something or somebody has died, seems to indicate that this is being caused by malware which has infiltrated the computer ! :mad:

O t t o

[zbobg]

Thy cause of DrWatson running is often malware but it can be for any simple reason that a program failed, the fact that DrWatson runs (or tries to run) is not proof of a malware infestation.

Only programs designed with debugging features will run DrWatson if they fail. Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer can and will run DrWatson if they fail, many other core Windows programs have this feature built into their code. So, if you do have a malware infestation that is causing Windows to malfunction it is more likely that you will see DrWatson try to run.

Misbehaving system drivers and Windows services are probably the second most observed cause of system malfunctions that can cause DrWatson to run.

The fact that DrWatson itself fails is not surprising, it is a very old program designed for the first versions of the Windows OS.

[maddog_2020]

I am running Windows XP, my bad. But as far as I know I dont have any malware. I run Spybot S&D a few times a week to rid myself of any problems. But im getting two to three hits a day on this and I end up having to restart my cpu.

[zbobg]

Interestingly, the last time I had DrWatson (try to) run was a failure of the RS blueprint editor just last week. I recall that I did something stupid in the blueprint editor (can't remember what) and it crashed. DrWatson tried to run and it crashed as well. What's interesting is that it did not freeze up Windows, I went right back to what I was doing with no ill effects.

So, if you're having frequent Windows freezing problems I would begin to suspect a hardware problem if you've eliminated a possible malware problem. It's either that or you may just have a fubar'd Windows installation. You might be best to wipe Windows and start fresh with a new Windows install. Or you could try a Windows repair from the Windows CD then go directly to the Windows update site and ask for ANY available updates, be sure to check there for any hardware updates MS may have for your computer.

I would check first to be sure you have proper and recent motherboard/hardware drivers, malfunctioning motherboard/hardware drivers can cause all sorts of hard to diagnose problems.

You can run eventvwr.msc (Event Viewer) to examine Windows errors, look in the Application and System areas for errors. You can sometimes get detailed info on the cause of the problem by double-clicking the error.