Physical memory dump

[BILL RAILO]

I've only had my dell 2400 a week now and recieved a "physical memory dump".
I only have 256mb of memory. Should I in-
crease memory, and if so should I go for a
512 increase rather than 256 because I heard too much memory can create
problems?

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

A 'physical memory dump' is created in conjunction with a BSOD. A BSOD can occur for a number of reasons - not necessarily related to the amount of RAM installed. An increase to 512 MBs would be helpful, but wouldn't necessarily stop the BSOD. Can you post the Stop Code that was associated with the BSOD. That will help to isolate the problem.

--

Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User


| I've only had my dell 2400 a week now and recieved a "physical memory dump".
| I only have 256mb of memory. Should I in-
| crease memory, and if so should I go for a
| 512 increase rather than 256 because I heard too much memory can create
| problems?
|
|

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

I've only had my dell 2400 a week now and recieved a "physical memory
dump". I only have 256mb of memory. Should I in-
crease memory,

It is highly unlikely that adding memory would have any effect on
your getting a "physical memory dump." More memory can sometimes
increase performance, but is unlikely to stop crashing.

and if so should I go for a
512 increase rather than 256

How much memory you need depends on what apps you run, but almost
everyone needs a least 256MB for decent performance. For some
people, for example those who edit large photographic images,
more than 256MB--even much more--can be required for good
performance.

If you are currently using the page file significantly, more
memory will decrease or eliminate that usage, and improve your
performance. Go to
http://billsway.com/notes_public/winxp_tweaks/ and download
WinXP-2K_Pagefile.zip and monitor your pagefile usage. That
should give you a good idea of whether more memory can help, and
if so, how much more.

because I heard too much memory can
create problems?

Sorry, you heard wrong. That's completely false.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I've only had my dell 2400 a week now and recieved a "physical memory dump".
I only have 256mb of memory. Should I in-
crease memory, and if so should I go for a
512 increase rather than 256 because I heard too much memory can create
problems?

The problems only come in way beyond that level - the tool Ken mentions
would indicate whether any more will be of use. Unless there is
significant actual use (say over 100MB) of the page file, more RAM is
not going to improve performance. But lack of memory will *not* be what
is causing the dumps. Indeed I would suggest turning them off unless
you are asked by someone who is debugging his software to send one.

You have something that is crashing and the system's 'automatically
restart' is cutting in. Turn this of too.

In Control Panel - System - Advanced, click Settings in the Startup and
Recovery section. There change the 'write debugging information' to
(none) and also uncheck 'automatically restart'. You may well now get
a Blue screen failure instead, but at least will get some guidance as to
what is happening. Likely causes are hardware failure (which might be
the actual RAM chips or might be overheating) or trouble with a driver,
in which case the bottom line of the BSOD usually refers to it -
something.sys