Basics

Usually GPFs (General Protection Faults) can be triggered by bad code, bad software drivers, hardware problems, configuration issues, and other conditions. Dr. Watson is a diagnostics tool shipped with the DOS 6.x floppy kit. The tool catches GPF related problems (and other problems too) and stores the information in a log file.

Where to Find it and Install it

Dr. Watson is on floppy disk no. 4 of the Microsoft Windows 3.1 Operating System floppy kit.

To get this to the internal hard disk, install the floppy, and from the File Manager, File:Run menu, type the following commands:

    A:\expand.exe a:\drwatson.ex_ c:\drwatson.exe

This will place the exe file on the internal hard drive.

After this, start Dr. Watson and it will show up on the desktop. If you want to have Dr. Watson running continuously, you can place the icon in the Startup group of the Program Manager. You can click on the Dr. Watson icon to see if any errors have been logged.

Log File

Dr. Watson will place a log file called DRWATSON.LOG in the \WINDOWS directory. This is the log you need for further investigations.

Configuration, WIN.INI

You need to configure Dr. Watson by setting various values in the WIN.INI file, under a sub section called [Dr. Watson] (note the space between Dr. and Watson). Here are the most common values end users ought to configure (the default values are fine to start with).

    [Dr. Watson]
    Dislen= 4                      // how many instructions are diasm:ed,
                                   // default 8
    DisStack=100                   // how many levels of stack, def 2

    ShowInfo=dis err loc mod par  sou
                                   // enable full logging of everything
                                   // possible needed for extended dump
    TrapZero=1                     // enable divide by zero trapping

Here are actually the values we recommend when creating Dr. Watson dumps concerning QuickTime for Windows problems:

    [Dr. Watson]
    showinfo=par err dis loc mod
    skipinfo=clu

For More Information

Consult the Windows 3.1 SDK Help files for more information about using Dr. Watson.

[May 01 1995]

Developer Documentation | Technical Notes | Development Kits | Sample Code