I have a problem on an embedded device that I think might be related to a stack overflow. In order to test this I was planning to fill the stack with magic bytes and then periodically check if the stack has overflowed by examining how much of my magic bytes that are left intact. But I can't get the routine for marking the stack to work. The application keeps crashing instantly. This is what I have done just at the entry point of the program. //fill most of stack with magic bytes int stackvar = 0; int stackAddr = int(&stackvar); int stackAddrEnd = stackAddr - 25000; BYTE* stackEnd = (BYTE*) stackAddrEnd; for(int i = 0; i < 25000; ++i) { *(stackEnd + i) = 0xFA; } Please note that the allocated stack is larger than 25k. So I'm counting on some stack space to already be used at this point. Also note that the stack grows from higher to lower addresses that's why I'm trying to fill from the bottom and up. But as I said, this will crash. I must be missing something here.