How to solve Windows system crashes in minutes. A system crash: If you're lucky, it only ruins your day. More than likely, you're in for several bad days followed by a few stressful weeks or months. After all, systems rarely fail only once. Rather, they keep crashing until you find the cause and fix the problem. UPDATE: How to solve Windows 7 crashes in minutes. WINDOWS 8: Operating system is cooked, sent to manufacturers. This primer will show you how to solve problems quickly. Using a tool that costs nothing, you can solve approximately 5. Windows server and workstation crashes in a few minutes. The tool is Win. Dbg , the free Windows debugger. You've probably never used the debugger, don't have it and don't want it. I have a computer with dual dvd drives. Inserting a dvd into a sata drive running windows xp SP3 causes the pc to reboot. Seems like a system crash. How to Fix Windows AppCrash Error. For Earlier Versions of Windows (7/Vista/XP). Causes of Computer Lock Ups in Windows XP by Andrew Aarons. USB Keyboard Causing the System to Reboot; Causes of a PC That Is Slow When It Shuts Down. FIND Causes Program to 'Crash'. I'm using Quicken 2009 Release 4 Windows XP Service Pack 3 on a computer. After all, it's a developer's tool, not an administrator's, right? Yes, but what you need to know is remarkably easy to learn, and even a rudimentary familiarity with the debugger could enhance your skills and your resume. Think about this: After rebooting a crashed machine, we've brought up the debugger, opened a memory dump file, given the debugger a single command, and learned not only that the cause was a driver, but also the driver's name — all in less than a minute. Granted, the debugger was installed and configured, we knew what commands to use and what to look for. How about watching your PC continually reboot? That's how some aggravated Windows XP users have been. Continuous Reboots Plague Windows XP. SP3 causes the computer to crash during boot, and Windows XP. Windows XP > Crashes and reboots. What are the various causes for Windows XP to reboot or crash. This would be a major problem if I was downloading or installing a program. So, I cannot remain in my Windows. How to solve Windows 7 crashes in minutes. Crash causes by the numbers. How to determine which driver causes Windows to crash? Reboot There is a possibility that your computer will crash on reboot. Windows 2k/XP Registry Tweaks Windows 2k/XP. But so will you by the end of this article. Why does Windows crash? To date, Windows has been used most commonly on the x. The x. 86 implements a protection mechanism that lets multiple programs run simultaneously without stepping on each other's toes. This protection comes in four levels of privilege or access to system memory and hardware. Two of these levels are commonly referred to as kernel mode and user mode. Kernel mode is the most privileged state of the x. Both the Windows OS and drivers are considered trusted, and, therefore, run in kernel mode. This ensures unfettered access to system resources and the ability to maximize performance. Other software is assigned to user mode, the least- privileged state of the x. Applications, such as Microsoft Word, run in user mode to guard against applications corrupting system- level software and each other. Although kernel- mode software is protected from applications running in user mode, it is not protected from other kernel- mode software. For example, if a driver erroneously accesses a portion of memory that is being used by other software (or not specifically marked as accessible to drivers), Windows stops the entire system. This is called a bug check or a crash, and Windows displays the popularly known Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). About 9. 5% of Windows system crashes are caused by buggy software (or buggy device drivers), almost all of which come from third- party vendors. The remaining 5% is due to malfunctioning hardware devices, which often prompt crashes by corrupting memory contents. Another little- known fact is that most crashes are repeat crashes. Few administrators can resolve system crashes immediately. As a result, they typically happen again and again. It's common to see weeks and months pass before the answer is found. By solving a crash immediately after the first occurrence, you can prevent time- consuming and costly repeat crashes. We'll focus on solving crashes under Windows 2. XP and Server 2. 00. The process is identical for Windows servers and desktops. With respect to the debugging and interpretation process, this information applies with remarkably little differences to other operating systems, such as Linux, Unix and Net. Ware. Getting started. To resolve system crashes using Win. Dbg, you need the following: A PC with 2. M bytes of hard- disk space, a live Internet connection and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5. A PC running Windows Server 2. Windows 2. 00. 0 or Windows XP. The latest version of Win. Dbg . A memory dump (the page file must be on C: for Windows to save the memory dump file). The memory dump is a snapshot of what the system had in memory when it crashed. Few things are more cryptic than a dump file at first glance. Yet it is the best place to go for information on a crash. You can try to get this data in other ways - a user or administrator may remember what the system was doing when it crashed, or that they installed a new hardware device recently, in which case you can check related drivers or hardware - but they could also forget, providing incomplete or inaccurate information. Windows Server 2. XP create three types of memory dump files: Small or mini dump : A mini dump is a tiny 6. K- byte file. One reason it's so small is that it doesn't contain any of the binary or executable files that are in memory at the time of a system crash. The . exes are needed for full and proper crash analysis, therefore, mini dumps are of limited value without them. However, if you are debugging on the machine that created the dump file, the debugger can find them in the System Root folders, unless they were changed by a system update (we'll provide a workaround for this later). XP and Server 2. 00. While it saves all mini dumps, the system only saves the most recent full dump. Windows 2. 00. 0 can save mini dumps, but by default it is set to save only a full dump. Kernel dump : This is equal to the amount of RAM occupied by the operating system's kernel. For an XP PC with 5. M bytes of RAM, this is usually around 6. M bytes, but it can vary. For most purposes, this crash dump is the most useful. It is significantly smaller than the full memory dump, but it only omits those portions of memory that are unlikely to have been involved in the crash. Complete or full dump : This is equal to the amount of RAM in the box. Therefore, a machine with 5. M bytes of RAM creates a 5. M- byte dump file (plus a little). While a full dump contains all possible data and executables the memory has to offer, its sheer size can make it awkward to save or transfer to another machine for debugging. Windows 2. 00. 0 produces a full dump by default. Because XP and 2. This data can be extremely valuable, giving you a rich history to inspect. Saving a memory dump. To resolve system crashes through the inspection of memory dumps, set your servers and PCs to automatically save them with these steps: Right- click on My Computer. Select Properties. Select Advanced. In the Start up and Recovery section, select Settings; this displays the Startup and Recovery dialog box. In the Write debugging information section, select kernel memory dump. While still in the Start up and Recovery dialog box, ensure that the following options are checked in the System failure section: Write an event to the system log. Send an administrative alert. Automatically restart. In the Write debugging information, you have the option to save only the most recent dump file or to have the system rename the existing dump file before it creates a new one. We prefer saving the dump files because previous dump files may provide additional or different information - however, space can be an issue, so set this option according to your needs. The Write debugging information section also tells you where the dump file will be created. On XP and 2. 00. 3 systems, mini dumps are located at %System. Root%\Minidump, or c: \Windows\Minidump; kernel and full dumps are located at %System. Root%\MEMORY. DMP or c: \Windows\MEMORY. DMP. For Windows 2. If you don't have a dump file on your machine, you can get one from another system or download one here. This kernel dump is about 2. M bytes zipped and 6. M bytes extracted. It was created using a testing tool that generates a system crash. Getting the debugger. The debugger is free and available from Microsoft's Web site. At the site, scroll down until you see the heading, . The most recent versions are about 1. M- byte downloads. You can do the installation on a PC without restarting it (Don’t be surprised if the site has changed somewhat. Microsoft keeps improving the debugger with releases at least once per year.). This distribution includes KD. EXE, the command- line kernel debugger; NTSD. EXE, the command- line user- mode debugger; CDB. EXE, the command- line user- mode debugger (a variant of ntsd. Win. Dbg, the GUI version of the debugger. Win. Dbg supports kernel- mode and user- mode debugging, so Win. Dbg is the one we'll use here. Setting up the debugger. There are two ways to look at crash data: View what's in memory while the system is stopped (by linking it to a running PC with a null- modem cable, or invoking a product that you pre- installed on the system, such as Soft. ICE, which lets you step through the code in memory line by line)Null- modem cables are serial cables that have been configured to send data between two serial ports. They are available at most computer stores. Do not confuse null- modem cables with standard serial cables, which do not connect serial ports. Given that minimizing interruptions is the goal of most administrators, we opt for the second way: Restart the server or PC, launch the debugger, and open the dump file. From the program group Debugging Tools for Windows, select Win. Dbg. After the debugger comes up, you'll immediately notice a lot of . That's because you have to specify a dump file to analyze and download symbol tables to use in the analysis. Let's take care of the symbol files first. Symbol tables are a byproduct of compilation. When a program is compiled, the source code is translated from a high- level language into machine code. At the same time, the compiler creates a symbol file with a list of identifiers, their locations in the program, and their attributes. Some identifiers are global and local variables, and function calls. A program doesn't require this information to execute. Therefore, it can be taken out and stored in another file, reducing the size of the final executable. Smaller executables take up less disk space and load into memory faster than large ones. But there's a flip side: When a program causes a problem, the OS knows only the hex address at which a problem occurred.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2016
Categories |