An assertion failure was hit in some code.
// There should be no additional references to the object at this point assert(m_cRef == 1);
But the reference count was 2. That’s not good. Where is that extra reference and who took it?
This was not code I was at all familiar with, so I went back to first principles: Let’s hope that the reference was not leaked but rather that the reference was taken and not released. And let’s hope that the memory hasn’t been paged out. (Because debugging is an exercise in optimism.)
1: kd> s 0 0fffffff 00 86 ec 00 04effacc 00 86 ec 00 c0 85 ec 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ // us 0532c318 00 86 ec 00 28 05 00 00-80 6d 32 05 03 00 00 00 ....(....m2..... // rogue
The first hit is the reference to the object from the code raising the assertion. The second hit is the interesting one. That’s probably the rogue reference. But who is it?
1: kd> ln 532c318 1: kd>
It does not report as belong to any module, so it’s not a global variable.
Is it a reference from a stack variable? If so, then a stack trace of the thread with the active reference may tell us who is holding the reference and why.
1: kd> !process -1 4 PROCESS 907ef980 SessionId: 2 Cid: 06cc Peb: 7f4df000 ParentCid: 0298 DirBase: 9e983000 ObjectTable: a576f560 HandleCount: 330. Image: contoso.exe THREAD 8e840080 Cid 06cc.0b78 Teb: 7f4de000 Win32Thread: 9d04b3e0 WAIT THREAD 91e24080 Cid 06cc.08d8 Teb: 7f4dd000 Win32Thread: 00000000 WAIT THREAD 8e9a3580 Cid 06cc.09f8 Teb: 7f4dc000 Win32Thread: 9d102cc8 WAIT THREAD 8e2be080 Cid 06cc.0878 Teb: 7f4db000 Win32Thread: 9d129978 WAIT THREAD 82c08080 Cid 06cc.0480 Teb: 7f4da000 Win32Thread: 00000000 WAIT THREAD 90552400 Cid 06cc.0f5c Teb: 7f4d9000 Win32Thread: 9d129628 WAIT THREAD 912c9080 Cid 06cc.02ec Teb: 7f4d8000 Win32Thread: 00000000 WAIT THREAD 8e9e8680 Cid 06cc.0130 Teb: 7f4d7000 Win32Thread: 9d129cc8 READY on processor 0 THREAD 914b8b80 Cid 06cc.02e8 Teb: 7f4d6000 Win32Thread: 9d12d568 WAIT THREAD 9054ab00 Cid 06cc.0294 Teb: 7f4d5000 Win32Thread: 9d12fac0 WAIT THREAD 909a2b80 Cid 06cc.0b54 Teb: 7f4d4000 Win32Thread: 00000000 WAIT THREAD 90866b80 Cid 06cc.0784 Teb: 7f4d3000 Win32Thread: 93dbb4e0 RUNNING on processor 1 THREAD 90cfcb80 Cid 06cc.08c4 Teb: 7f3af000 Win32Thread: 93de0cc8 WAIT THREAD 90c39a00 Cid 06cc.0914 Teb: 7f3ae000 Win32Thread: 00000000 WAIT THREAD 90629480 Cid 06cc.0bc8 Teb: 7f3ad000 Win32Thread: 00000000 WAIT
Now I have to dump the stack boundaries to see whether the address in question lies within the stack range.
1: kd> dd 7f4de000 l3 7f4de000 ffffffff 00de0000 00dd0000 1: kd> dd 7f4dd000 l3 7f4dd000 ffffffff 01070000 01060000 ... 1: kd> dd 7f4d7000 l3 7f4d7000 ffffffff 04e00000 04df0000 // our stack ...
The rogue reference did not land in any of the stack ranges, so it’s probably on the heap. Fortunately, since it’s on the heap, it’s probably part of some larger object. And let’s hope (see: optimism) that it’s an object with virtual methods.
0532c298 73617453 0532c29c 74654d68 0532c2a0 74616461 0532c2a4 446e4961 0532c2a8 00007865 0532c2ac 00000000 0532c2b0 76726553 USER32!_NULL_IMPORT_DESCRIPTOR (USER32+0xb6553) 0532c2b4 44497265 0532c2b8 45646e49 0532c2bc 41745378 contoso!CMumble::CMumble+0x4c 0532c2c0 00006873 0532c2c4 00000000 0532c2c8 4e616843 0532c2cc 79546567 0532c2d0 4e496570 0532c2d4 00786564 0532c2d8 2856662a 0532c2dc 080a9b87 0532c2e0 00f59fa0 0532c2e4 05326538 0532c2e8 00000000 0532c2ec 00000000 0532c2f0 0000029c 0532c2f4 00000001 0532c2f8 00000230 0532c2fc fdfdfdfd 0532c300 45ea1370 contoso!CFrumble::`vftable' 0532c304 45ea134c contoso!CFrumble::`vftable' 0532c308 00000000 0532c30c 05b9a040 0532c310 00000002 0532c314 00000001 0532c318 00ec8600
Hooray, there is a vtable a few bytes before the pointer, and the contents of the memory do appear to match a CFrumble
object, so I think we found our culprit.
I was able to hand off the next stage of the investigation (why is a Frumble being created with a reference to the object?) to another team member with more expertise with Frumbles.
(In case anybody cared, the conclusion was that this was a variation of a known bug.)
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