katy said:
Has anyone figured out a way to save the info on a blue screen? Either by
using 'print screen' or some other method?
It is curious why it's impossible (that I know of) to save a screen shot
of a blue screen, unless Vista has this capability?
Hi Katy,
Windows (including Vista) displays a STOP error (aka blue screen) when the
Kernel has hit an unrecoverable error. The kernel is the very core of the
operating system. So at this point, when the kernel is damaged, reliable
processing can no longer continue; doing so might corrupt data and cause
more damage. Instead, the exception handler takes over. Windows tries to log
an event to the Event Log, then starts shutting down as much as possible. It
also tries to write a MEMORY.DMP file to disk, with a diagnostic snapshot of
memory. Finally it will display a basic error message using a simple video
driver (the "blue sceen"). By the time the blue screen is displayed, there
is very little of Windows still running in the background - certainly not
enough to handle complex operations like printing or screen capture (which
require file I/O, user mode servies etc).
After you reboot, you can get information about the STOP error by going to
the Event Log. The event will give you the STOP code, parameters, and other
vital clues. For a full diagnosis of the STOP error, the definitive answer
is to open the MEMORY.DMP dump file in one of the Windows Debugging tools,
such as WinDBG, and examine the call stack. This will give you all the
information which was displayed on the blue screen, and a lot more besides.
There is a description of the procedure in this KnowledgeBase article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263
Vista simplifies the process a bit. In Control Panel, you can go to System
and Maintenance, Problem Reports and Solutions, to see details of previous
user mode crashes (such as application "hangs") and kernel mode crashes
(STOP errors). Here you can also check online to see if the problem is known
to Microsoft, and if a solution is available.
Hope it helps,
