I have written an application in C, which runs as a Windows service. Most users can run the app without any problems, but a significant minority experience crashes caused by an Access Violation, so I know I have a bug somewhere. I have tried setting up virtual machines to mirror the users' configurations as closely as possible, but cannot reproduce the issue.
My background is in Java - when a Java app crashes it will produce a stack trace showing exactly where the problem occurred, but native applications aren't so helpful. What techniques are normally used by C developers for tracking down this type of problem? I have no physical access to the users' machines that experience the crash, but I could send then additional tools to install, to capture information. I also have Windows error reports showing Exception Code/Offset etc but these don't mean much to me. I have compiled my application using gcc - are there some compiler options I can use to generate more information in the event of a crash?
