How do I configure automatic memory dumps in case of blue screens?
The easiest way to configure your system to produce memory dumps in case of blue screens is through a tool called BellaVista:
- Download BellaVista from the author's home page.
- Just unpack the downloaded ZIP file and execute the BellaVista.exe in the directory that matches your system's architecture ("win32" for 32bit systems and "x64" for 64bit systems).
- Switch to the "Crash Dump" tab.
- Click the button at the bottom that matches the dump type you want Windows to create in case of a system failure. The default of Windows and actually the value we recommend as the default setting on your testing system is the "Small Dump". The other dump types are only of interest in special occasions and will be requested explicitly in case they are needed.
- Reboot the system so your configuration changes become active.
If you encounter a blue screen you can now find the written memory dump either in the Minidump sub-directory of your Windows directory in case you enabled small dumps or in the file "memory.dmp" in your Windows directory for all other dump types.