If you are experiencing technical difficulties with your Windows computer that causes the well known blue screen of death to appear, then you may have noticed that Windows generates minidump files on your hard drive. These files contain technical details concerning the errors that caused Windows to hang or reboot. The files aren’t really useful until you take some steps to make them readable.
1)
The first thing you need is a software package called “Debugging tools for Windows”.
Please go to the following URL and select the appropriate download for your version of Windows (scroll down) :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463009
Install the debugging tools.
2)
Check C:\WINDOWS\Minidump.
There should be one or more Minidump files. Write down the name of the latest file.
3)
You will need to open a command prompt for the next step. In Windows 7 click on the Windows logo icon and type “cmd” in the search box, hit enter. Previous versions of Windows usually have a link to the command prompt in one of the menus. Or click “Run” and type “cmd”, and hit enter.
4)
The location of the Debugging Tools for Windows depends on your Windows version. In most cases it can be found in :
c:\program files\debugging tools for windows [type : cd "c:\program files\debugging tools" and hit enter.]
4)
Type : kd -z C:\WINDOWS\ Minidump\MINIDUMPFILENAME.dmp [where "MINIDUMPFILENAME.dmp" is the name of the file you got from step 2.]
Type : .logopen c:\debuglog.txt [This will output data to the debuglog.txt file, and will be the file you will use for analysis. ]
Type : .sympath srv*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols [ Make sure there are no white spaces after the last character. ]
Type : .reload;!analyze -v;r;kv;lmnt;.logclose;q
The above process might take a few minutes.
5)
The last step is to open the debug log file. You can use Notepad for example, just open c:\debuglog.txt. You can also send the file to your techie friends.
