How do I disable the 'Debug / Close Application' dialog on Windows Vista?

Question

To force Windows Error Reporting (WER) to take a crash dump and close the app, instead of prompting you to debug the program, you can set these registry entries:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting]
"ForceQueue"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\Consent]
"DefaultConsent"=dword:00000001

After this is set, when your apps crash, you should see *.hdmp and *.mdmp files in:

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\WER\

See here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb513638.aspx

regedit

DWORD HKLM or HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\DontShowUI = "1"

will make WER silently report. Then you can set

DWORD HKLM or HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\Disabled = "1"

to stop it from talking to MS.

I'm not sure if this refers to exactly the same dialog but here is an alternative approach from Raymond Chen:

DWORD dwMode = SetErrorMode(SEM_NOGPFAULTERRORBOX);
SetErrorMode(dwMode | SEM_NOGPFAULTERRORBOX);

I had to disable this for release automation work on Windows 64-bits for Firefox and I did the following:

• gpedit.msc
• Computer configuration -> Administrative Templates
• Windows Components -> Windows Error Reporting
• Set "Prevent display of the user interface for critical errors" to Enabled

It is similar what was accomplished for Customer Experience reporting in: http://www.blogsdna.com/2137/fix-windows-installer-explorer-update-has-stopped-working-in-windows-7.htm

In my context, I only want to suppress the popup for my unit tests and not for the entire system. I've found that a combination of functions are needed in order to suppress these errors, such as catching unhandled exceptions, suppressing run time checks (such as the validity of the stack pointer) and the error mode flags. This is what I've used with some success:

#include <windows.h>
#include <rtcapi.h>
int exception_handler(LPEXCEPTION_POINTERS p)
{
    printf("Exception detected during the unit tests!\n");
    exit(1);
}
int runtime_check_handler(int errorType, const char *filename, int linenumber, const char *moduleName, const char *format, ...)
{
    printf("Error type %d at %s line %d in %s", errorType, filename, linenumber, moduleName);
    exit(1);
}

int main()
{
    DWORD dwMode = SetErrorMode(SEM_NOGPFAULTERRORBOX);
    SetErrorMode(dwMode | SEM_NOGPFAULTERRORBOX);
    SetUnhandledExceptionFilter((LPTOP_LEVEL_EXCEPTION_FILTER)&exception_handler); 
    _RTC_SetErrorFunc(&runtime_check_handler);

    // Run your tests here

    return 0;
}

In WPF application

[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
static extern int SetErrorMode(int wMode);

[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
static extern FilterDelegate SetUnhandledExceptionFilter(FilterDelegate lpTopLevelExceptionFilter);
public delegate bool FilterDelegate(Exception ex);

public static void DisableChashReport()
{
 FilterDelegate fd = delegate(Exception ex)
 {
  return true;
 };
 SetUnhandledExceptionFilter(fd);
 SetErrorMode(SetErrorMode(0) | 0x0002 );
}