First Fault Stack Trace

The case of an error reporting fault chain (page 152) led me to this pattern that corresponds to First Fault software diagnostics pattern proper (page 406). Here the term first fault is used for an exception that was either ignored by surrounding code or led to other exceptions or error message boxes with stack traces that masked the first one. Typical examples where it is sometimes possible to get a first exception stack trace include but not limited to:

•    Fault in error reporting (page 152) started as a fault in some other process

•    Hidden exception in user (Volume 1, page 271) or kernel (page 140) space

•    Double fault (Volume 1, page 314)

•    Nested exception in unmanaged (Volume 2, page 305) and managed (Volume 2, page 310) code

•    Nested offender (Volume 4, page 120)

It is also sometimes possible unless a stack region was paged out (Volume 3, page 118) to get partial stack traces from execution residue (Volume 2, page 239) when the sequence of return addresses was partially overwritten by subsequently executed code.