INFO: General Protection Fault Error Handling in VFP 6.0 and 7.0 (194184)



The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows 6.0
  • Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows 7.0

This article was previously published under Q194184

SUMMARY

Visual FoxPro versions 6.0 and 7.0 offer improved error reporting for General Protection Faults (GPF) and Fatal Errors.

MORE INFORMATION

In earlier versions of Visual FoxPro, a General Protection Fault (GPF) or Fatal Error result in the display of one of two dialog boxes: either a Dr. Watson dialog box or a dialog box stating that a GPF has occurred.

In Visual FoxPro 6.0 and 7.0, when a GPF or Fatal Error occurs, a dialog box appears with the program call stack. With the call stack information, you are able to trace the problem code more easily than in earlier versions.

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry



This enhanced error reporting can be disabled by editing the registry; to do so, follow these steps:
  1. Click Start, click Run, and then enter REGEDIT.
  2. Locate the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT key, click to select it, and then click New Key on the Edit menu.
  3. For the new key name, type VisualFoxpro.6.
  4. With this new key selected, clicking New Key on the Edit menu to create another new key beneath it.
  5. Name the new key Exceptions.
  6. With the new Exceptions key selected, you will see an entry in the right-hand pane of RegEdit that resembles the following:
    (Default)                REG_SZ                      (value not set)
    					
  7. Double-click the (Default) entry and enter 0 in the Value data box in the window that appears.

    A value of 0 in the new key created here will disable the enhanced error reporting in VFP 6.0. To do this for VFP 7.0, perform the same steps again, but in step 3 name the new key VisualFoxpro.7.
Note that this only affects the development versions of VFP 6.0 and 7.0. The run-time versions report the errors described in the first paragraph of the "More Information" section.

REFERENCES

(c) Microsoft Corporation 1998, All Rights Reserved. Contributions by Mike A. Stewart, Microsoft Corporation.

Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:6/11/2002
Keywords:kbinfo kbMiscTools KB194184