Crash reports help you certify your Windows Store app

re: Crash reports help you certify your Windows Store app

Michael Milne — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:39:34 GMT

Why an app will crash in the certification environment and not on deleveloper machines is simply that they are developers machines. Few try testing on PERFECTLY NEW MACHINE. Often they forget to clean out old .dlls or they are compliling on the same machine as testing, missing something but it runs fine on the compiling machine because it is there on it and doesn't need to be compiled in.

I run a software company, and as much as I say this, programmers continually try to shortcut the hassle of re-installing a clean copy of the OS on a separate machine everytime they want to test a finished product. And new programmers always say this is impossible and not the cause because everything was removed from the last install. Not.

re: Crash reports help you certify your Windows Store app

Fabio Pintos - MSFT — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 23:56:31 GMT

One should test an app in a clean test machine, or at least with a clean test account, in order to get closer to the certification environment.

The dev machine/account can end up with persistent settings in the user profile that can mask issues, like nickm324 found out.

Testing without network or simulating network failures, full disk and things like that are also interesting ways to find bugs that might cause an app to crash in user's machine but not in the dev machine.

Two things to remember:

1) it always works in the dev machine;

2) you don't ship the dev machine.

:-)

re: Crash reports help you certify your Windows Store app

nickm324 — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:49:17 GMT

Thank god! I went through this very situation just recently and was so frustrated because all the TESTER notes said was basically "The app crashed on startup". And I could not get it to crash no matter what I did here locally. Very frustrating to say the least.

Turned out to be an issue with trying to read Profile values and them not already existing on startup of the app, but I go no information at all from the TESTER at what point it crashed, were any dialogs displayed, etc.

re: Crash reports help you certify your Windows Store app

jwiese — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:18:43 GMT

@Zubair the crashes these dumps will come from are most often those that the tester experience while manually testing your application as part of the certification process. That said, your application could crash while the automated WACK tool is running, in which case there are files created to review what may have happened, but you should be catching those before you submit to Microsoft for certification as @Lukas pointed out.

re: Crash reports help you certify your Windows Store app

Zubair — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:26:20 GMT

I know broken apps should not be submitted, what I am trying to say is what are those 'unexpected app crashes' that dont appear on developer PC and tablets that do in MS certification? Does Windows ACK generate crash dumps and Error Info other than in Windows Event viewer?

re: Crash reports help you certify your Windows Store app

Lukas — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:39:49 GMT

@Zubiar: If the app crashes on your side, you can debug that yourself. You should not submit an app that crashes on your own PCs. This is only for unexpected app crashes that occur at MS certification site, which you cannot reproduce yourself.

re: Crash reports help you certify your Windows Store app

Zubair — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:35:52 GMT

Hi, Can this report not be embedded in Windows ACK tool? It would be alot easier not to mention quicker than having to go through Windows store only to find out app crashed, hope it makes sense.

re: Crash reports help you certify your Windows Store app

PeteGoo — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:47:39 GMT

This is waaaaaaaaayy overdue. I've been trying to get an app certified for 3 months because the crash only happens in MS certification environments. I feel like I've just been released from a prison camp! I want to complain about the lost time, the hours of labour and the walk home but I'm just happy I can see the light.