Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for providing custom product support for a computer program based on levels of execution instability. The execution of a software program is monitored over a period of time to determine the execution stability of the program. Based upon the monitoring and upon one or more threshold levels of instability, the execution stability of the program is categorized. Based upon the categorization, custom program support may be provided for a user of the computer system executing the program. For instance, based on the categorization free or reduced fee product support may be provided.

Abstract: A method, system, and apparatus are provided for identifying unresponsive portions of a computer program. According to the method, program code that can potentially result in unresponsive behavior is wrapped in timers. A timer is started on a background thread at the beginning of the execution of a section of program code. The timer is set to expire after a specified threshold period of time has expired. A determination is made as to whether the timer expires during the execution of the section of program code. If the timer expires during the execution of the section of program code, execution is interrupted and the section of program code is identified as unresponsive and system state information is stored for use in diagnosing the computer program and remedying the unresponsive behavior. The actual system state information stored may be defined by a remote control file and may be stored at or around the time the timer expires.

Abstract: An event monitoring and logging system, including apparatuses and methods, for instrumenting an on-line application program, or service, for generating and communicating events upon the occurrence of certain conditions during the execution thereof, for monitoring generated events in real and near-real time in accordance with configurable rules, for generating and communicating selected alerts to appropriate personnel upon the exceeding of configurable thresholds, for logging generated events and related information in data files and databases for subsequent analysis, and for producing reports related to such instrumentation and generated events.