What is a minidump and what do I do about it?

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I just had a bluesceen on my computer and it restarted unexpectedly and very fast too. It is working fine at the moment and had been for over a week with everyday use for hours on end everyday. So any idea what is going on and how I can fix it? Oh and it gave me information on something called a minidump which as far as I can tell is supposed to tell me whats wrong.

I have had two of my Windows operating systems do that recently, and I think that had to do with some kind of hardware-configuration issue or conflict. My Windows 7 did that several times, actually, but now both systems have seemingly "fixed themselves" and that has stopped altogether.

If your machine keeps doing that, take note of what is being reported on that blue screen and I suspect you will see something like "system protection" going on and possibly get a little insight as to specifics.

Yeah it said it did it to protect my system but it went off so fast I couldn't read but the first line of 20-30 lines..

I just remembered ...

In my case, the problem was caused by a third-party backup running in the background.

Are you familiar with CCleaner? http://www.piriform.com/

In "Tools", that free program will let you look at startup programs and either disable or delete their startup entries. If you do any experimenting there, however, just be careful about not changing anything before knowing whether any change you make might have an even worse effect.

Note: I have *always* found CCleaner to be 100% reliable.

Look for the .dmp file in C:\windows\minidump, then you can analyze it with WinDbg (link) to get more info.

See here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx

Generally dumps and minidumps (you can select the type of dump you want with a configuration of your system) are caused by a device driver branching off into strangeland.

The OS can detect bad behavior and take a dump. This will (supposedly) help your support personnel diagnose your problem and provide you with a repair action for it.

This usually results in a cost to you of some sort or another.

You can go here:

http://www.memecode.com/docs/minidump.php

and see if you can fix it yourself.

You can also try running MSCONFIG

and trying a safe mode or a mode that allows you to run with limited drivers enabled.

DANGER!! !! !
MSCONFIG can cause permanent damage to your Operating System.

Don't use it unless you 1) know what you are doing, and 2) are willing to completely trash your system.

It happened again this time w/o the dump and it just restarted itself all very fast gonna have to find out what's wrong dang it..

Oh and sorry but the links were confusing and I doubt I would understand anything info I get... I think it is my drivers they need updating but I can't figure out which ones. I did update the MOBO after the first time it happened and the 2nd time it didn't show a blue screen just black then off and on again.

If you want to upload the .dbg file to a file hosting website, I can load it into IDA Pro for you and take a look (I will be able to tell you the specific driver that caused the problem).

If you didn't get a Blue Screen Of Death the second the time, then it's probably a different problem. My first suspect would be your power supply. If you are able to swap yours out for a better one you might try that.

I would also run memtest86+ to check for any memory faults. You can download an iso that you can burn to a bootable CD, or if your computer can boot from a USB key you can download the installer to install it to one of those.

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

That is the link to the minidump. I saw people doing this on another site, just wish I knew what it all meant..

Any help is appreciated Minidump download
Click after the smiley.

Yeah tried to do memtest can't figure it out

You want to download the pre-compiled bootable iso (http://www.memtest.org/download/4.10/me ... 10.iso.zip), then you can burn it to bootable CD like the CD you used to install windows (it wont install anything though, it will just test your memory which you can't do properly from within Windows). ImgBurn is a free tool that can burn the .iso to a CD (or if you have other burning software already almost anything should be able to do this).

Yeah I just don't have any CD's ;/ guess I can get some...

There's already a built in memory test program in Win7. When you boot your computer, right after the BIOS screen and before the Windows loading animation, press F8 to show a boot menu. It's a bit time sensitive, so you may want to press it repeatedly after the BIOS screen. If you are using a USB keyboard, you'll also have to make sure the BIOS setting for USB keyboard is enabled. At the menu, press escape, the display will change and there should be a "Windows Memory Diagnostic" option on the lower half of the screen. Press tab to switch to the lower pane and press enter to run the program. Leave it running for a few hours to see if there's anything wrong with your RAM.

However, I think you should try updating your GPU driver first since CCC is the control panel of your GPU driver.