?? Minidump ?? Two questions ??

[Dean King]

Note.. These two questions are not actually..
"problems" ... just newbie curosity... OK

Q 1:
What is the intended purpose of "Minidump" ???

Q 2:
Should the "Minidump" be cleared out occasionally
as a part of normal system "house-keeping" maintenance...
Like internet-cache, cookies, temp filies, pre-fetch.. etc...
along with scandisk, defrag, and virus & spyware scans ???

No special problem... just curious !!!

Dean King

 

[Will Denny]

Hi Dean

'Dump' files are created after a BSOD has occurred. They include Stop Codes and various other info. that can help to isolate the reason for the BSOD. Unless you know how interpret the contents of a 'dump' file they can be deleted. You can turn the 'dump' creation off by:

Right clicking on My Computer, selecting Properties>Advanced tab>Startup and Recovery Settings - drop down menu under 'Write debugging information'.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Dean,

Minidumps are the content of ram dumped into a file when there is a system
failure. These are useful in figuring out the cause of the failure if you
know how to read them, otherwise you can simply delete them. Reading
material for you:

Reading the Small Memory Dump Files Created by Windows XP [Q315263]
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315263

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Alex Nichol]

Q 1:
What is the intended purpose of "Minidump" ???

Q 2:
Should the "Minidump" be cleared out occasionally
as a part of normal system "house-keeping" maintenance...
Like internet-cache, cookies, temp filies, pre-fetch.. etc...
along with scandisk, defrag, and virus & spyware scans ???

It is a basic dump of the central tables used by the system, intended
for inclusion if you get an error and 'send report to Microsoft'. If
you are not doing that you might as well turn the dumps off. Microsoft
do find them, as collected, useful in analysing how things go wrong, but
in a 'bulk' way, not in relation to you in particular. So it may be
worth making those reports *if* you have an always on, broadband
connection.

To turn the dumps off, go to Control Panel - System - Advanced and in
Startup and Error recovery, Settings, set 'Write debugging information'
to be '(none)'. While there I would also uncheck the 'automatic
restart', which the system does rather too freely

Delete any dumps that are sitting around, once any report you make has
been sent off