minidump questions

Hi
my ati x700 pro died ,and i bought an ati hd 3450 , i 'm not a game player

well now i get so many blues screen errors

but i can't find the mini dump file

well i have 2 question
1) i have 2 hardisk ,in one xp , in the second hd the pagefile.sys
to create a minidump file do i need to have the pagefile.sys in the c: where i have intalled xp?

2) what can i use to read the minidump file?
and understand why i have such blue screen error

thanks

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263

 

mantra,

I'm just learning how to analyze minidumps myself. In my search, I found this step-by-step, screenshot-by-screenshot tutorial on Minidumps using the Windows debugging tools that MrBrian referenced. The tutorial can be found here . The download links on that tutorial page seem old now so here are some fresh ones.

You will need to download:
Debugging Tools for Windows which can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/installx86.mspx#a

And Windows Symbol Packages which can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/symbolpkg.mspx#d

Then possibly go here http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm for STOP messages.

My minidumps are located at C:\WINDOWS\Minidump

Even with the info obtained, it may not be easy to figure out exactly what the problem is but may point you in the right direction. In your case, it would seem that the video driver or the card's software is the culprit. I imagine that you have uninstalled and installed it a few times already.

I put the Windows Symbol Packages on a non-system partition as it quite large. I let the Debugging Tools install to the default C:\. If you have alot of dumps just go through them one at a time and keep track of the relevant info. The tutorial goes through an actual dump so you'll get the idea. Much of it was over my head but I was able to stumble my way through it.

Good luck.

 

The DebugWizard Tool comes in quite handy for the DOS-switch illiterate. It doesn't add value but it makes creating a readable log out of a minidump an easy task.

regards,
T

 

Here is a note I wrote to myself on how to do minidump analysis:

1. Run WinDbg from Microsft Debugging Tools.

2. If running WinDbg for first time, then go to File->Symbol File Path, type in the following, substituting the correct Windows path: SRV*c:\windows\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols. Then go to File->Save Workspace.

3. Go to File->Open Crash Dump, browse to appropriate file in Windows\Minidump.

4. After fully loaded, type !analyze –v.

5. Scroll down to the bottom of the bugcheck and look for the following two lines – MODULE_NAME and IMAGE_NAME. These lines tell you precisely which software module caused the fault.

(See http://apcmag.com/7577/beat_those_bluescreen_blues for full article)

 

Please note that you don't need to do this, since you can set WinDbg to use a symbol server to download only needed symbols.

 

Another helpful set of articles:
http://www.asktheadmin.com/2007/09/how-to-debug-bsod-blue-screen-of-death.html
http://www.asktheadmin.com/2007/09/how-to-debug-blue-screen-of-death-bsod.html

 

Thanks for the tip. I bet it would have been quicker using a Symbol Server than the 200Meg Symbols package that took 11hrs to download on dial-up. Which really spans two nights.

I had that same exact BSOD that is shown on the link you provided.
http://www.asktheadmin.com/2007/09/how-to-debug-bsod-blue-screen-of-death.html
My wife could not understand why I was so mesmerized. go figure