If you’re getting Access Violation errors or any other kind of unexpected error while using PowerGREP, you can help us pin-point the problem by running a special debug version of PowerGREP.
Extract all the .exe and .dll files from the .zip archive that you can download below. You can place them in any folder. Then run PowerGREP5Debug.exe. When an error occurs, a file PowerGREP5Debug.el will be automatically created in the folder %APPDATA%\JGsoft under your Windows user profile. The .el file is a text file that contains debug information related to the error. We may be able to use this information to figure out what is causing the problem, and fix it.
If you manage to reproduce the error with the debug version, please report it to the PowerGREP user forum. If you start a new conversation in the forum using the debug version, then it will automatically attach the PowerGREPDebug.el file to your message. When responding to an existing conversation, please click the Add button below the message text area, and select Debugging Log to attach the .el file.
If you are unable to use the forums, you can also email us the PowerGREP5Debug.el file.
Please don’t take screen shots of the debugging log or copy/paste the file into a message. We need the actual .el file so we can load it into our debugging tools. That doesn’t work with screen shots. For cosmetic problems, screen shots of the problem itself can be useful.
Also, please do note that the debug version is specifically designed to crash and burn with detailed error information when an error occurs. This makes the debug release inherently less stable than the published release. So it’s definitely recommended to use the published version for day-to-day work, and the debug version only to help us test problems.
To download the debug version of PowerGREP, please enter your PowerGREP user ID and associated email address. Make sure to select the correct bitness to match the operating system (Windows) of the PC you’ll be running the debug version on. You can check this by selecting Help|Support and Feedback in the menu in PowerGREP and checking “Windows version” indicator. If it says “x64” you need to 64-bit version. If it says “x86” you need the 32-bit version. If it says “WOW64”, you’re running the 32-bit version of PowerGREP on 64-bit Windows, which is not recommended.