Question

We’ve been seeing this error crop up in our system event logs an alarming amount. It relates to a very simple command-line app (literally four or five lines of actual processing code) that consumes a webservice on the same machine. I modified the application configuration and it seemed to fix things, but now it’s back.
The error only appears in the Event Viewer, and looks a little like this:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: .NET Runtime 2.0 Error Reporting
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5000
Date: 19/09/2011
Time: 09:26:04
User: N/A
Computer: SQL
Description:
EventType clr20r3, P1 estimatorcli.exe, P2 1.0.0.0, P3 4e410f1b, P4
mscorlib, P5 2.0.0.0, P6 4d8c128c, P7 420e, P8 51, P9
system.servicemodel.fault, P10 NIL.

Sorry if this is too much.
Googling hasn’t brought back a whole lot of information, just some obscure references to the EventType. I’ve tried debugging, and a lot of the time, the program runs fine on my XP64 development machine (the server’s running 2003 Ent64). However, when I update the Service Reference, Visual Studio creates two references to the Web Service, and when I try to run the app, it throws a nasty error that seems to indicate that the app can’t determine which of the references it shoudl be using. Removing the surplus reference in the app.config file seems to cure this, but I’ve done this and moved the compiled app to the server and am still getting this error. I also find it interesting that the error is listed as being .Net 2.0 when the app was written for .Net 3.5; the server has .Net 3.5SP1 installed.
Could this be a Visual Studio bug? If so, could there be a way around it?
Thanks.
Update: From going through the stack trace, I was able to discover the error was my fault; I hadn’t passed enough parameters through to a stored procedure. Looking back, I guess the entire framework was working as can be expected, I just wish the errors were easier to read!

Answer 1

This is typically how the .NET runtime notifies you of an uncaught exception in your application.

Since you have a “simple command line application”, try putting a try/catch block, together with writing the exception to the console, eventlog or some file.

Example:

public static int main(String[] args)
{
    try 
    {
       // other code

       return 0;
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
       Console.Error.WriteLine(ex);

       // Save to file, in case this is an application that runs in the background
       // Make sure the directory exists and is writable though.
       System.IO.File.WriteAllText("C:\\TEMP\\Exception.txt", ex.ToString());

       return 1;
    }
}