How-to: Open a mini dump file (mdmp) with WinDbg

Today I was debugging an issue where Microsoft Visual Studio was closing at random in a Microsoft Visual Studio Package. We narrowed down the issue to a previous Microsoft bug report. I came to a point where Microsoft Visual Studio was creating a mini dump file.

After some quick thinking, I downloaded and installed Debugging Tools for Windows. I then opened WinDbg and clicked on Open Crash Dump and navigated to the location above.

Your final result will look something like this:

If you are looking for more information on how to analyze a mini dump file or how to tell WinDbg to use a symbol server then continue reading here.