Hi Brian,

Thank you for reporting this issue.

Dr. Watson is an accepted nickname for the Windows Error Reporting (WER) technology since its introduction in windows XP. Not surprisingly the client side of WER in Windows XP and Windows 2003 is implemented in the DWwin.exe process. Data collection policy (the type of dump and additional system information) is controlled by the server and can be overridden by the client trough several registry keys, configurable mainly from the Group Policy MMC snap-in.

DrWtsn32.exe is just a debugger that can be invoked as JIT debugger when an application terminates due to an unhandled exception. DrWtsn32 offers a easy way to customize the amount of data collected in those cases (full dump vs. mini dump).  It is true that the same capability can be achieved using a regular debugger. However, DrWtsn32 is already installed on Windows XP and Windows 2003.  As you noticed, the configuration UI shown in Figure 13.4 does not affect WER behavior.

In Windows Vista Dr. Watson has been retired in favor of a new, a more robust implementation of WER.  The change is described in Chapter 15

Thanks,

Daniel