windows xp "memory dump"

[Black-Syth]

A little while ago my PIII pc crashed. I got the blue screen upon startup and it told me something along the lines of "memory dump error" or "memory dump not found" I re-installed XP and everything works fine... but i wish to know what this "memory dump" is and why this happaned. To me this happaned out of the blue....

 

[yoyo]

When your pc crashes XP creates a memory dump file, depending on what you have specified a full memory dump, means the whole content of your ram when the system crashed is saved to the file, or a mini dump that only records certain memory addresses. These dump files can be used for debugging, ....by some rare experts.

 

[Perris Calderon]

yoyo...I know it's been said that there are not too many people that can read these memory dumps...this is not true...( I actually thought you could read a memory dump).

I've had debugging performed for me from collegues, and it's very simple for anyone to get microsoft to read the dump as well.

this is far from the useless feature that some people claim it is, and error reporting should actually be encouraged, rather then discouraged as we've usually told users, as this feature surely helps in research and developement

now, I don't think it's neccessary to have these dumps if you have no access to people who can read them, and if you are not prone to wait for microsft to help, and if you don't care to be a part of ms's research and developement strategy

never the less, it's a far easier task to have these read then some would have us believe...

not alot of harm allowing a memory dump, just in case something happens that's urgent for you to discover a cause, by whatever means neccessary.