Question: On a customer machine (WinXP SP2) to which I have no access, I have a Win32 EXE (unmanaged C++) that crashes on startup. I guess the best way to troubleshoot this is to obtain a (mini-)dump and analyze it later with windbg or similar.

Now, I would normally tell the customer to install Debugging Tools for Windows and run

```
cscript adplus.vbs -crash

```

However, it appears that you can't use adplus for apps that crash on startup (<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q286350/> says that "Do not use ADPlus in the following situations: If you must troubleshoot a program or process that quits unexpectedly during startup"). The same article says "use User Mode Process Dump", but I failed to install it successfully.

Any idea of how to get a dump of a process that crashes on startup on Win32?

Answer: 
You can install [WinDBG](http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/) on the client machine and then use "[Image File Execution Options](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824344)" and set WinDBG to open once that the process has started. Then run the crashing process and WinDBG will open up immediately. press ***g*** (Go) and wait for the process to crash then type "**.dump /mfh dumpFileName.dmp**". Now you have dump file that you can debug.
Here is a nice way to collect Vista SP1 crashes:

<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb787181(VS.85).aspx>

No need to install anything on the machine!