Selenium IEDriverServer.exe crashing on a virtual machine - selenium-webdriver

Question

Lately I’ve been getting an intermittent error when running Internet Explorer Automation using Selenium WebDriver on a virtual machine. The tests are being running on Virtual Machine through Microsoft Test Manger. I’m having a hard time figuring out what is going on.
The following is logged for the test that was trying run when this problem occured:
exception: OpenQA.Selenium.WebDriverException: The HTTP request to the remote WebDriver server for URL http://localhost:56645/session/2762cafb-d3c9-4d9a-a0a5-05463e69b7b7/moveto timed out after 60 seconds. ---> System.Net.WebException: The operation has timed out
When a test fails I write the Exception message and stack trace to a file. But in this case there really is no stack. Was expecting something deeper.
System.Net.WebException: The operation has timed out
at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
at OpenQA.Selenium.Remote.HttpCommandExecutor.CreateResponse(WebRequest request)
Here is detail from eventviewer when the failure occured:
Log Name: Application
Source: Application Error
Date: 8/28/2015 9:02:09 AM
Event ID: 1000
Task Category: Application Crashing Events
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Description:
Faulting application name: IEDriverServer.exe, version: 2.44.0.0, time stamp: 0x5449666f
Faulting module name: IED4C2A.tmp, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x5449666b
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000a41e6
Faulting process id: 0xf2c
Faulting application start time: 0x01d0e191ad6d3d19
Faulting application path: C:\AutomationDrivers\IEDriverServer.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Users\SACCTO~Z\AppData\Local\Temp\IED4C2A.tmp
Report Id: fd4f5070-4d84-11e5-891b-00155d6e673e
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Application Error" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>100</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-08-28T13:02:09.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>14302</EventRecordID>
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>IEDriverServer.exe</Data>
<Data>2.44.0.0</Data>
<Data>5449666f</Data>
<Data>IED4C2A.tmp</Data>
<Data>0.0.0.0</Data>
<Data>5449666b</Data>
<Data>c0000005</Data>
<Data>000a41e6</Data>
<Data>f2c</Data>
<Data>01d0e191ad6d3d19</Data>
<Data>C:\AutomationDrivers\IEDriverServer.exe</Data>
<Data>C:\Users\TASKBO~1\AppData\Local\Temp\IED4C2A.tmp</Data>
<Data>fd4f5070-4d84-11e5-891b-00155d6e673e</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>
I can run the same test locally using the test runner built into Visual studio without any problems. The VM has about 1.5 Gig of memory and never uses up more than half of it while the tests are running. CPU stays fairly low.
Am running out of idea on things to look at. Any thought/ideas appreciated. Thank you.

Answer 1

I have written two articles on how to create good crash dumps when the Windows Error Reporting dialog is shown.
The first article describes how to attach a debugger, basically:
wait for the WER dialog to be shown
attach a debugger (like windbg)
press the "Debug" button
confirm the warning that a debugger is already attached
click "No" when asked to use the selected debugger
now do whatever you like in your debugger, e.g. create a dump with .dump /ma seleniumcrash.dmp
If you're not so familiar using a debugger, try the second article, which activates LocalDumps just in time, which is:
wait for the WER dialog to be shown
create WER LocalDumps Registry entries for the application that crashed. Make sure you set DumpType to 2 and the folder is writable (check NTFS permissions).
Close the WER dialog
Once you have the good crash dumps, you can get much more information out of them, such as the call stack and .NET callstack.
The event viewer exception code is 0xc0000005, which is an access violation aka. NullReferenceException in .NET.