Question

I’m looking for an library/tool for .NET that logs almost everything that happens in my C# application (Windows Form).

The problem is that I’m delivering an application to a client (Windows XP) and after doing some task, that classic Microsoft error window appears:

“ApplicationName has encountered a
problem and needs to close. We are
sorry for the inconvenience”

I’m currently handling my application exceptions, but this is something external and I can’t get anything from that error, so I would like any automated library that helps me with that.

It would work if it logs each line of code executed, orr just log what line was executing before that error appeared, or something that could give me more info about that error.

P.S: It’s a multithreaded application, and have to Timer controls (one for watching a folder every 5secs, and another for watching thread list…). I’m using Windows 7 here and everything seems to work ok.

Answer 1

Why not log in the windows event viewer, that’s what it’s made for. From a simple config setting you can toggle it to include all levels under, for example, 4- Verbose, 3- Information, 2-warning, 1-Error, you just log the message as one of these 4 types. You can also combine this with a boolean traceswitch for debug tracing, but it’s not necessary.

The windows event viewer also offers you summaries, can be connected to remotely, and sysadmins are comfortable in working with it.

using System;

using System.Diagnostics;

class MySample{

public static void Main(){

    // Create the source, if it does not already exist.
    if(!EventLog.SourceExists("MySource")){
        EventLog.CreateEventSource("MySource", "MyNewLog");
        Console.WriteLine("CreatingEventSource");
    }

    // Create an EventLog instance and assign its source.
    EventLog myLog = new EventLog();
    myLog.Source = "MySource";

    // Write an informational entry to the event log.    
    myLog.WriteEntry("Writing to event log.");

}

}

Sounds like what you need is to put a breakpoint and step through your code, if it’s threaded, just open the thread windows in visual studio while stepping through the code. Temporarily put longer delays on your timers if to many threads make it difficult to debug.