Windows Error Reporting

Windows Error Reporting (WER) (codenamed Watson) is a crash reporting technology introduced by Microsoft with Windows XP and included in later Windows versions and Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0. Not to be confused with the Dr. Watson debugging tool which left the memory dump on the user's local machine, Windows Error Reporting collects and offers to send post-error debug information (a memory dump) using the Internet to Microsoft when an application crashes or stops responding on a user's desktop. No data is sent without the user's consent. When a crash dump (or other error signature information) reaches the Microsoft server, it is analyzed, and information about a solution is sent back to the user if available. Solutions are served using Windows Error Reporting Responses. Windows Error Reporting runs as a Windows service. Kinshuman Kinshumann is the original architect of WER. WER was also included in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) hall of fame for its impact on the computing industry.