How do I create a memory dump of my computer freeze or crash?
Your question is slightly unclear -- do you want to make it generate the dump when it crashes, or do you want to generate a dump when it isn't crashing and try to diagnose it from that? If the latter, that's probably not a particularly good way of going about it.
Enabling crash dumps
You can enable crash dumps by going to
My Computer
> Properties
> Startup and Recovery
> Settings
and then select either a minidump or a kernel memory dump under Write debugging information
. This should write a minidump when a crash is caught.
Initiating a manual crash
Required set-up
If you're asking how to crash manually and get a minidump written, you can do the following:
Open regedit.
-
Locate the following key if you have a USB keyboard:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\kbdhid\Parameters
Or the following key if you have a PS/2 keyboard:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
In the Edit menu, click Add Value and add the following registry entry:
- Name:
CrashOnCtrlScroll
- Data Type:
REG_DWORD
- Value:
1
- Name:
Exit the registry editor, then reboot.
Crashing the (hung) system
After the reboot, you can trigger a crash by pressing the SCROLL keyboard key twice while you hold the right CTRL key, as long as you have Windows set to write a dump when doing this, it will write it to %SYSTEMROOT%\Minidump
.
The hotkey in short form is CTRL+SCR LK+SCR LK.
Dumping a a process when it hangs or crashes
I would use ProcDump to create a dump of the proccess that is crashed:
ProcDump is a command-line utility whose primary purpose is monitoring an application for CPU spikes and generating crash dumps during a spike that an administrator or developer can use to determine the cause of the spike. ProcDump also includes hung window monitoring (using the same definition of a window hang that Windows and Task Manager use), unhandled exception monitoring and can generate dumps based on the values of system performance counters. It also can serve as a general process dump utility that you can embed in other scripts.
You need to tell the computer to make a crash dump when it blue screens in
My Computer
-> Properties
-> Advanced
-> Start and Recovery
.
Analyzing the dump
I use these procedures to analyze the dump.