C# The call to MiniDumpWriteDump is failing with "Access is denied". What could be the problem.

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This is on a 64 bit system. We have a service running and an attempt is being made at writing a mini dump of the service at that time. The user logged on has admin rights... and the service is running under that account.

The call is like this:

Declaration at top of code page...
[DllImport("Dbghelp.dll")]
static extern bool MiniDumpWriteDump(IntPtr hProcess,uint ProcessId, IntPtr hFile, int DumpType, IntPtr exParam, IntPtr UserStreamParam, IntPtr CallBackParam);

and call...

MiniDumpWriteDump(processHandle, (uint)process.Id, file.SafeFileHandle.DangerousGetHandle(), MiniDumpWithFullMemory, IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero);

This is after enabling SEDebugPrivilege (wasn't sure if I had to, but tried that)
Also, tried OpenProcess on the service I am going after.

****
A call to OpenProcess always returns 0 on this system... It seems I may indeed have access problems on the service, but where is that configured? Thanks so much to everyone :D

But always catch the exception on the MiniDump with Access is denied.
Would anyone have any information or ideas on what I am doing wrong?
Thank you, and if I need to add anything, please let me know.

Posted 15-Apr-15 9:21am

LLAKW

Updated 16-Apr-15 6:43am

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ZurdoDev 15-Apr-15 15:56pm

Access denied will generally mean a permissions issue so I'd keep investigating that direction.

LLAKW 15-Apr-15 16:02pm

Thank you very much for the reply. I'll look further into that.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 15-Apr-15 16:27pm

What happens if you run as administrator?
Where is your C# declaration of MiniDumpWriteDump (P/Invoke)?
—SA

LLAKW 15-Apr-15 16:47pm

Thank you for the reply as well. We are doing this by command line, so would there be something I need to set on the command line to run as admin? Or would I need maybe to check the run as admin on the exe? And I'll update the original question with the declaration.
Thank you very much

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 15-Apr-15 18:24pm

Please see Solution 1.
—SA

LLAKW 16-Apr-15 9:09am

Thank you so much for the input. It is truly appreciated. Interesting thing for this case is that the client has, for their situation, decided to turn UAC off (never notify). So at the moment UAC isn't coming into play, which is making this whole thing even stranger.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 16-Apr-15 9:23am

Well, you need to investigate the case...
—SA

LLAKW 16-Apr-15 10:16am

Thank you once again. I appreciate you even taking the time to look at it.
I just ran a test that, rather than do a mini dump, I just create and write to a basic text file, which succeeded. So, it seems as though there may be a problem with accessing the process?? Because I can definitely create and write to a file... so a bit concerning about reading the process memory possibly? Thank you again.

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Answer 1 · 2015-04-15T12:23:00

LLAKW wrote:

Thank you for the reply as well. We are doing this by command line, so would there be something I need to set on the command line to run as admin? Or would I need maybe to check the run as admin on the exe? And I'll update the original question with the declaration.
Thank you very much

Sure.

Note that being logged as administrator won't be enough, unless you are using obsolete Windows XP which did not have UAC.

To me, the simplest way would be to create a batch file with the command line(s) you are using for application start and run it from the shell (any file manager, for example, such as Explorer) using the context menu item "Run As Administrator". You can use if with the application itself, or, say with the whole file manager, so all the application started from this instance of file manager process will also be started "As Administrator". It will show the UAC confirmation dialog, so you need to confirm your agreement to start the application with elevated privileges. The UAC dialog cannot be bypassed, as it could be unsafe.

For more information, please see: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11841-run-administrator.html.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control.

Sorry, this is only a part of the answer, answering only to the comment to the question. But this is something important you need to know before you proceed.

—SA