Error reporting for ArcGIS software crash data

ArcGIS Desktop applications are capable of capturing software crash data. This crash data can be sent as an Error Report to the ESRI development team to analyze and fix the errors. Sending reports about software crashes to ESRI is very helpful for a number of reasons.

The Error Report that we receive from you includes important and detailed information that often enables us to repair a problem that we have no other means of tracking down. Many of these errors cannot be easily reproduced. These types of errors occur in many situations—for example, when the software is used for very long periods of time and a memory leak has occurred that consumes the available system resources, when a hardware limitation is reached, and when ArcGIS is used with third-party software extensions that have not yet been updated to work with your version of ArcGIS.

The content of the Error Report that you send to [e-mail] provides the ESRI development team with insight into how to better engineer the software to avoid these errors in the future.

Whenever you encounter errors that occur with repeatable steps, you should always contact ESRI's Support Services, providing the steps to reproduce the problem that creates an error.

The ten most recent Error Reports that have occurred on your system are saved to the application data location on your local hard drive:

C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Application Data\ESRI\ErrorReports

These Error Reports are created for all ArcGIS Desktop applications and extensions. ESRI will look to provide similar reporting facilities for our other products in future releases.

Note:

All Error Reports are treated as confidential to ESRI, and their usage is covered by ESRI Privacy Policy.

Sending Error Reports

When a software crash occurs in ArcGIS, you will be presented with the option to send an Error Report to ESRI or not. If you choose Send Error Report, this Error Report is sent directly to the ESRI development team.

When you send an Error Report, you can optionally provide an e-mail address, the detailed steps that led you to the Error Report dialog and your system information. If the ESRI development team needs more information, they may contact you.

The default option is that the Error Report will be sent via a Web service. If you are not on the Internet when the crash occurs, if our Web service that receives Error Reports is temporarily unavailable, if use of the Error Report Web service has been disabled by your system administrator, or if your machine doesn't have .NET Framework 2.0 installed, a dialog box will prompt you to save the Error Report into a folder and gives you an e-mail address to send the report manually.

When sending the Error Report through e-mail, you will be prompted to save the Error Report file to your disk. Then, you will need to attach that Error Report file to the e-mail and add the detailed steps that caused the Error Report dialog to appear. The e-mail address to send all Error Reports is displayed on the Web page.

Configuring Error Reports

ArcGIS administrators can configure how the Error Reports operate for their organization by customizing the local machine registry.

Error Reports

The ten most recent Error Reports are saved to your disk at the following location:

%APPDATA%\ESRI\ErrorReports\

For example:

C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Application Data\ESRI\ErrorReports

Registry settings—Location

HKCU\Software\ESRI\Settings\ErrorReports

Setting	Type	Description
EnableErrorReport	DWORD	If set to 0, error reporting is disabled. You will see a dialog box letting you know that an error has occurred.
ShowErrorDialog	DWORD	If set to 0, no dialog box is shown.
EmailAddress	String	The e-mail address that appears in the dialog box.
YourEmailAddress	String	The e-mail address that will be sent to the Web service.
EnableWebService	DWORD	If set to 1, send the Error Reports to the Web service.
CacheSize	DWORD	The number of Error Reports to save on your disk.

Error Report table

Combinations of registry keys and the resultant action

EnableErrorReport	ShowErrorDialog	EnableWebService	Action
1	1	1	Message asking if you want to send the Error Report to ESRI; the Error Report is saved to your local disk.
1	1	0	Message asking if you want to save the Error Report and e-mail it to ESRI; the Error Report is saved to your local disk.
1	0	0	No dialog box is shown. The Error Report is saved to your local disk.
1	0	1	No dialog box is shown and the Error Report is automatically sent to ESRI. The Error Report is saved to your local disk.
0	Any	Any	Message telling you a serious error has occurred. The Error Report is saved to your local disk.

Error Report table 2

What happens at ESRI when we receive your Error Report

At ESRI, we want to work hard to address your software issues and make repairs whenever we can. We look at all the issues reported by users.

ESRI uses an automated system to log all Error Reports sent by users and to perform an initial analysis of the problem. We also track how many times each issue has been reported. Each issue is assigned to a specific development team that evaluates each issue and determines a course of action.

We identify all issues that we can fix and address them through bug repairs that are tested, validated, and installed for delivery in a service pack or the next major software release.

Fixing errors that result from a Error Report

A significant proportion of bugs resulting from Error Reports that you send to us can be fixed. We try to fix all reported issues. However, on some occasions, we cannot get enough valid information from the report to understand the problem well enough to create a fix.