How to read MiniDumps

What are Minidumps??

Minidumps are what Microsoft Windows like to use to store all the important information about what you were running, and what caused the problem. It can even show you what drivers and what you were doing at the time to cause the problem, but that sometimes can be hard to figure out with all the codes and stuff that comes along with the Minidump.  If you would like to read more about Minidumps please check out Wikipedia, they could tell you more about it.

How do I read a Minidump??

Microsoft has a tool that will read minidumps and let you try to figure out why you had a Blue Screen of Death and some have it call it Blue screen of Doom.  Most of time when you have a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), it usually means something unexpected happened and Windows can’t recover from it.    Some of the common problems are Memory Corruption, Program Corruption and Hard Drive Corruption.   Although these are not all them you can also have Driver issues, and program issues, which in part is a wide range of possibilities that could of caused it in the first place.

Warning Signs of Hard Drive Trouble

For every computer there comes a time when you have a problem with hardware or software. This is for those who want to learn the signs of possible fixes for having hard drive problems. Although if you know you’re hard drive is dieing then you better back it up as quickly as possible. You will of course need to get the back up software to protect your data.  If you have special drivers you will need to backup yours drivers.  If you have an OEM system then you will need to backup the Hidden Partition.

So what are the warning signs of a hard drive failure:

• Unexpected freezing of Windows — When Windows Locks up and you have to reboot or getting a Blue Screen of Death.   You have no choice but to restart because you can’t do anything with windows.
• Losing data files — if you seem to see files being lost or deleted without your direct input.  It might be a sign of a computer virus or it could be a damaged hard drive.

Vista and BSOD

I wanted to talk about Vista and the terrible BSOD scenarios that I have found around the network.  I also want to talk about them to a point.  So I went through and look and here is what I found:

• NVidia Graphics Drivers — That should be well fixed by now.  I  don’t have an NVidia Computer with Vista on it and can’t say one way or the other.  I do know that recently they added new graphics drivers for Vista and are out.   That alone should fix most of the problems.

• Vista’s Blue Screen of Death — This little website has some great information on the causes and fix for them.

• Installing two Anti-virus Softwares in Vista –  it is a Kernel and Memory Protection that causes that.  I also think they are right about it.  You can’t have two programs try to use the kernel and the same memory spot. See Episode BOL Episode 793

Here are a few of them that I could find out lately.  Most of the Blue Screen of Deaths for VIsta should be over with.  Since the Release of Vista SP1, Microsoft has issued driver fixes and program compatibilities with that release.