How can I view the call stack of a running process/thread?

  1. Get Process Explorer.

  2. Enable Show Details for All Processes from the File menu:

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  3. In the main pane, select the process you're interested in:

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  4. Open the context menu (right-click) for the selected process and click Properties:

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  5. On the Threads tab, you'll be able to see a list of the running threads inside that process:

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  6. Select the thread you're interested in and click the Stack button:

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  7. Process Explorer will now display the current call stack for the selected thread:

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Symbols

If your troubleshooting requires you to get more detail, it is often very helpful to load debugging symbols into Process Explorer. This is how:

  1. If you don't already have a Windows debugger installed, you're going to have to install the Debugging Tools for Windows first.

  2. In Process Explorer, open Configure Symbols... from the Options menu:

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  3. If you have the Debugging Tools (or another Windows debugger) installed, Process Explorer will automatically find the dbghelp.dll file. Otherwise, set the correct path here.

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    The Symbols path should look something like:

    SRV*C:\Symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

    The only part you'll want to adjust is C:\Symbols. That's the location where the debugging symbols will be cached.

Tags:

Windows

Troubleshooting

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