How to open a memory.dmp file in Visual Studio 2012

Question

In previous Visual Studio versions it was possible to open a .dmp file. See link:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fk551230(v=vs.100).aspx

But there's no option for VS 2012 in the version picker combo on that MSDN page. Empirically, I cannot open these files in 2012 Ultimate, the IDE tells me:

The is no editor available for 'C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP'. Make sure the application for the file type (.DMP) is installed.

Is the fact that I can't open it and that there's no documented support a coincidence?

Answer 1

For Visual Studio 2022, to open a .NET memory dump, install the following individual components:

• .NET profiling tools
• Windows SDK

Answer 2

You have to install Debugging Tools for Windows, which are part of the Windows SDK. You can install just a standalone Debugging Tools, you don't have to install the whole SDK. See for example these resources:

• Debugging Tools for Windows (WinDbg, KD, CDB, NTSD)
• Use Dump Files to Debug App Crashes and Hangs in Visual Studio
• How to Analyze a BSOD Crash Dump

You can download Standalone Debugging Tools for Windows or the whole Windows SDK.

If you need just to quickly inspect a minidump, you can use the great small utility BlueScreenView from Nirsoft. It's simple, doesn't even require an installation or any dependencies (you don't need Debugging Tools) and can display everything what a minidump contains. It's better for just finding out possible causes of BSOD, for any further debugging use Debugging Tools.

Answer 3

If you're looking to do this in Visual Studio 2013, and wonder why Dawid's answer doesn't seem to fix your issue, you're probably going to have to open the DMP file from within VS2013 by selecting "File->Open->File..." if you were double-clicking.

I could not open DMP files automatically with VS2013, getting the same error as Puplett.