Freeware Crash Doctor

Crash Doctor is a useful windows freeware that tries to recover crashed windows programs. The program activates itself when a windows program crashes and tries to recover the program from crashing state by careful analysis of the program.

The second purpose of Crash Doctor is to prevent further damage to other files that are dependent on the crashed program. If the program tries to open an existing file for writing CrashDoctor intercepts this and copies the original file to a backup location. This prevents any further damage done by the misbehaving program.

Pretty useful if you ask me, information and download at intellectualheaven.com

Recover Crashing Programs with CrashDoctor

CrashDoctor is available as freeware directly from the publisher and it is a program that was developed to recover crashing programs and debug them accordingly. It is a JIT Windows debugger that is activated the moment a Windows program begins to crash. At that point, it fits into the program by attachment and makes a typically successful attempt to pull the crashing program back up, using detailed program analysis. CrashDoctor was developed by Pankaj Garg for IntellectualHeaven and is held under copyright.

When Windows programs get out of line and become unruly, files can get lost in the crash. One of the interesting features offered by CrashDoctor is its ability to monitor program execution. In the event that a program attempts to open an existing file for writing, CrashDoctor intercepts this data and makes a copy of the original file, which is saved to a backup location in the temporary folder from which you will be executing the CrashDoctor program. Salvage and recovery is easy at this point. This is much better than seeing “Program not Responding” and sending the error report to Microsoft. Then you have to go digging to try to recover lost files. With the advantage of a pre-determined file backup location, program crashes do not have to compromise your files.

When a program crashes on Windows systems, the option to debug the program is always presented, at least on Windows 7 and Vista operating systems. CrashDoctor will display a recovery screen listing the available debugging program options on your system so you can select the appropriate program to get the crashed program back into working order without extending the extra dollars to Microsoft to do it for you. Basically, this means that you can have the same option to debug the program as opposed to crash recovery. It is important to understand that if you choose this option and begin debugging the program; recovery is going to be impossible. This is something that most users are aware of already, but if you don’t even know what debugging actually is, it is best that you don’t mess around with the option.

You will find at the link provided that this is a binary download in .zip format and all files will need to be extracted to a temporary folder in order to effectively execute CrashDoctor. Just clicking the executable application file in the original binary file is not going to launch the interface, as all other files included in the .zip are essential components.

It is advised for early Windows operating systems that you first try the 32-bit UNICODE version and, failing this, try the 32-bit ANSI version. This will most likely work out for Windows 95, 98 and ME, but for Windows 2000, XP and 2003, be sure that you only use the 32-bit UNICODE version, as the other will fail.

As far as x86-64 Windows systems, use the AMD64 version and there will be no problems. Windows 7 and Vista seem to handle this best when it comes to 64-bit systems.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday November 15, 2005 -
Tags:crash, Windows, windows software

Responses so far:

1. Antonio says:

   February 26, 2006 at 3:03 pm

   I have so many crash…Let’s see how works this program!

   Reply