Often times when doing some basic crash or hang analysis on a program, !analyze –v is not going to cut it because the heuristics engine is not going to reveal an interesting stack. Or maybe I don’t know what I’m looking for. Or maybe I don’t know advanced WinDbg debug techniques. Or … whatever. I define an “interesting” stack is one that contains unexpected components. If I don’t see it, I usually move on to some other techniques.
One of the things I try when a dump has nothing to offer me is to just take a look at the last error thrown. To do this, simply employ the get last error command, !gle. For example, an Outlook crash (which can be notoriously difficult to analyze even for the advanced Windbg enthusiast) I was asked to examine where the !analyze –v heuristics engine wasn’t telling me anything meaningful (at least to me) and where !gle might help: