So there is a quick hack method you can use to catch alignment exceptions on your code, but this approach - although effective, is not a very elegant solution. It turns out that VTune can help you find alignment faults very easily. I tested VTune using my MacBook running Windows XP and it had an event called: Misaligned Data Memory References By focusing on these events, you can find places in your code where alignment faults are happening. No more guessing, no more hacks, plain and simple. On some processors, this event counter might not be present. In cases like this, you would need to focus on the Split Stores Retired and Split Loads Retired events to find this information. We have added this extra information on our VTune labs as part of Artinsoft's continuing effort to support in-house customized 64-bit training .