In this particular case there should be no need to actually set the symbol path. We already have the exception code (0xc0000005), and this coupled with a couple of other facts is all we need to know in order to determine next steps:
1) the symbols for Football Manager 2014 are not available for us. We cannot do analysis on where the access violation occurred or what exactly caused it. We would need to set the Microsoft Symbol path to do this but a) we'd do it on our own computer and b) we still need those Football Manager 2014 symbols, which we don't have
2) an access violation is almost always a software bug, but can very occasionally be hardware related. If it were hardware related, we would be seeing variety and a random nature. What we actually see is a null deference (I'm assuming deference on the accumulator register (eax), which is very reasonably given a )it's data and b) faulting instruction of
ret 8) on a single application. We therefore conclude software on a variety of grounds.
3) Now that we've concluded software, we think about what we can do to fix the issue. Either it's a bug in the application, or it's some fault with this computer. Without the software being open source, it's very difficult to be absolutely certain, but with a null dereference failure, I think it's pretty safe to say it's a software bug.
4) So what's the fix? We get the OP to check for an update for the game. If that doesn't fix it, we get the OP to take a full process dump (if a reasonably size, which for a game it may not be) through the correct architecture Task Manager. We then get the OP to upload it to us, we quickly confirm that there's nothing we can diagnose without symbols (i.e. there's not some obviously weird conflict going on between graphics card driver), then they open a support ticket with the game maker, uploading the full dump file so the developers can take a look at what's going on with the source code.
Fixing the symbol error should not be necessary for any of those steps. I may be a Windows Update specialist, but the forum specialises in BSOD debugging and clearly something's rubbed off
We also like sharing methods here so that a) others can learn and b) I can be corrected by the better BSOD debuggers here, because I'm
really bad compared to them! (I would like to think that it's not me who's terrible, but they who are amazing, but who am I to judge?). Anyway, I'm getting massively off topic now :)
@oneutd: please check for a game update/patch for Football Manager 2014.
Richard
