not getting complete memory dumps on a crash/stop

[Dan Schullman]

My XPe [SP1] systems are NOT producing complete memory dumps, at least any
that I can find, even though I've selected such via the GUI (System
Properties->Advanced->Setup and Recovery->Settings). I need to get these to
help diagnose some system crashes! Any suggestions?

Note that I am NOT used to generating or finding such memory dumps (from
system crashes ("stops")), so don't assume that I know what "normal"
behavior is!

KB 903896 looked promising, even though we do NOT use the POS variant of
XPe. The system DOES lack diskdump.sys, but even when I pulled one over from
my XP Pro SP1 system, I still couldn't create a full dump.

Also FWIW, the Settings and Recovery options DO have some effect... when I
selected a small dump, and then forced a crash (using the keyboard per KB
244139), the dump finished almost immediately, whereas it ran for about 2.5
minutes when I asked for a complete dump. In both cases, after a crash,
system startup was delayed about 2.5 minutes and the screen was blank
between the initial XPe logo and the eventual login screen.

Perhaps of significance, small memory dump files were not in the location
that the Startup and Recovery settings show (i.e., %SystemRoot%\Minidump,
nor did the directory even exist). Based on size and date-based Windows
Explorer searches, I eventually found that the system WAS creating small
dumps (named %SystemRoot%\DUMPxxxx.tmp, where "xxxx" appears to be a hex
value).

Thanks in advance,
Dan S.

 

[Dan Schullman]

FYI, it appears that the problem was caused by the default dump file spec of
"%SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP". Replacing this with "C:\WINDOWS\MEMORY.DMP"
allowed me to get a complete memory dump.

[By the way, I thought the "don't overwite existing file" option would allow
me to get multiple dump files, but apparently it only gives me the first.]

--Dan S.