Why do you get a .NET runtime error for VB6 Applications in the Event Viewer?

Question

I am looking at a legacy VB6 application which crashes on a 64bit machine for a client. No one at work has been able to recreate or find an obvious source of the error, but the client has sent over the event viewer logs from one of the machines which indicates that there is a .NET Runtime error prior to additional Application Error messages.

If you see a .NET Runtime error which lists your application as the source of the problem, is it safe to assume that the problem lies with a call to a .NET component (ie add logging around the areas that call .NET components) or is it the .NET Runtime error a red herring?

Answer 1

It is not. The .NET runtime errer source in the event log just means that the .NET runtime was loaded into that process and it caught it first. It should still give you the exception code and location and maybe some stack info though.

On Windows 7, you can also configure user mode crash dumps to get a full crash dump when the crash occurs.