Analyzing crash dumps
When a system gets into an unstable state—for example, due to an exception that cannot be handled correctly—a Windows crash occurs. This happens because of bugs in kernel drivers or other code running at the kernel level. In this case, Windows attempts to save information that is relevant to the crash and can be used for debugging purposes. Since the system is in an unstable state during the crash, the data is first written to the paging file and then transferred to the appropriate dump file during the next boot. Depending on the system configuration, different crash dumps can be created. The following screenshot shows the dump formats offered by Windows 10:
Let's take a closer look at these formats, as follows:
- Small memory dump: These files have a size of 64 KB and 128 KB in 32-bit systems and 64-bit systems respectively. They contain information about running...