Dump files xp

For more information, see the "Specify what happens when the system stops unexpectedly" topic on the following Microsoft TechNet Web site:. A kernel memory dump records only the kernel memory. This speeds up the process of recording information in a log when your computer stops unexpectedly. You must have a pagefile large enough to accommodate your kernel memory. For bit systems, kernel memory is usually betweenMB and 2GB.

Additionally, on Windows and Windows XP, the page file must be on the boot volume. Otherwise, a memory dump cannot be created. This dump file does not include unallocated memory or any memory that is allocated to User-mode programs.

It includes only memory that is allocated to the kernel and hardware abstraction layer HAL in Windows and later, and memory allocated to Kernel-mode drivers and other Kernel-mode programs.

For most purposes, this dump file is the most useful. It is significantly smaller than the complete memory dump file, but it omits only those parts of memory that are unlikely to have been involved in the problem. If a second problem occurs and another kernel memory dump file or a complete memory dump file is created, the previous file is overwritten when the 'Overwrite any existing file' setting is checked.

A small memory dump records the smallest set of useful information that may help identify why your computer stopped unexpectedly. This option requires a paging file of at least 2 MB on the boot volume and specifies that Windows and later create a new file every time your computer stops unexpectedly.

A history of these files is stored in a folder. This dump file type includes the following information:. This kind of dump file can be useful when space is limited.

However, because of the limited information included, errors that were not directly caused by the thread that was running at the time of the problem may not be discovered by an analysis of this file. If a second problem occurs and a second small memory dump file is created, the previous file is preserved. Each additional file is given a distinct name. Sample 2. If you prefer the graphical version of the debugger instead of the command-line version, type the following command instead:.

There are several commands that you can use to gather information in the dump file, including the following commands:. To display information about loaded drivers and other modules, use the lm command.

The lm N T command displays information in a format that is similar to the old! For help with other commands and for complete command syntax, see the debugging tools Help documentation. The debugging tools Help documentation can be found in the following location:. If you have symbol-related issues, use the Symchk utility to verify that the correct symbols are loaded correctly.

For more information about how to use Symchk, see Debugging with Symbols. After you identify the command that you must have to load memory dumps, you can create a batch file to examine a dump file. For example, create a batch file and name it Dump. Save it in the folder where the debugging tools are installed. Type the following text in the batch file:.

When you want to examine a dump file, type the following command to pass the dump file path to the batch file:. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported. Improve this answer. Joel Coehoorn Joel Coehoorn Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. The Overflow Blog. Podcast Making Agile work for data science. Add code to your project. Add the MiniDumpWriteDump function and the appropriate exception handling code to save and send a minidump directly to the developer.

This article demonstrates how to implement this option. This library is not thread-safe, so any program that uses MiniDumpWriteDump should synchronize all threads before attempting to call MiniDumpWriteDump. The actual implementation is straightforward.

The following is a simple example of how to use MiniDumpWriteDump. This example demonstrates the basic usage of MiniDumpWriteDump and the minimum information necessary to call it. The name of the dump file is up to the developer; however, to avoid file name collisions, it is advisable to generate the file name from the application's name and version number, the process and thread IDs, and the date and time.

This will also help to keep the minidumps grouped by application and version. It is up to the developer to decide how much information is used to differentiate minidump file names.

It should be noted that the path name in the preceding example was generated by calling the GetTempPath function to retrieve the path of the directory designated for temporary files.

Use of this directory works even with least-privileged user accounts, and it also prevents the minidump from taking up hard drive space after it is no longer needed.