In this article, we will discuss the easiest way to analyze “Blue Screen” errors using the third-party application BlueScreen View. Even if your computer suddenly freezes or restarts and the blue screen appears only for a moment, you can still retrieve information about the causes of the crash. The operating system saves the contents of the RAM in .dmp files in case of a crash, and these files can be analyzed to obtain information similar to what is displayed on the “blue screen” and even more. However, the creation of .dmp files may be disabled on your system, so make sure your system creates .dmp files during crashes and find out where they are saved.
To ensure your system creates .dmp files and configure this feature, follow these steps:
– Open the “System” section, which can be done in Windows 10 via search.
– Go to “Advanced system settings.”
– In the “Advanced” section, select “Startup and Recovery” and click “Settings.”
– Make sure the “Write an event to the system log” checkbox is checked. If you do not want the computer to automatically restart after a blue screen appears, uncheck “Automatically restart.”
– Select “Small memory dump (256 KB)” from the dropdown menu.
– In the “Dump file” section, make sure the path to the folder where .dmp files are saved is correct.
By default, they are saved in %SystemRoot% – which is the “Windows” folder on the system drive. In other versions of Windows, the location of the .dmp files may differ.
After making the changes, click “OK.”
When your system crashes with a “Blue Screen of Death” and a .dmp file is created, you can use the BlueScreen View application to analyze these files. BlueScreen View is very easy to use and does not require installation.
Go to the official BlueScreen View website, download the application by clicking on “Download BlueScreenView (in Zip file).”
– Then you need to extract it. Right-click on the zip archive => Extract All…
– Extract it to the desired location on your disk.
– Launch BlueScreenView by double-clicking the left mouse button.
If .dmp files are not displayed after launching the application, although the system has crashed to a blue screen, go to “Options” => “Advanced Options”
Make sure the path to the .dmp files is correct. This path should be the same as in the system settings we discussed earlier.
– After that, you need to refresh the information in the application window, and all created .dmp files will be displayed.
If there are several .dmp files, refer to the crash date. Select the desired dump, and detailed information about it will appear.
– The error name will be displayed here
– If the crash was caused by a driver, its name will be found in the “Caused By Driver” field.
– In the lower part of the application window, files that could also cause the crash will be highlighted in pink. You will have to deal with each of these files in turn. You need to search for a solution on the internet, using the file name or the error code as a search key.
It is not necessary to manually enter the data into the search engine; if you right-click on the dump line, you can select one of the options from the context menu to immediately search for a description of your problem in Google.
– With this utility, you can quickly find the location of the problematic file on your computer’s disk.
Sometimes the file causing the problem belongs to a specific application. By double-clicking the file name with the left mouse button, a window with detailed information will appear, where “Full Path” will be the location of the application.
We would like to remind you that utilities like CCleaner delete .dmp files, so if you use such utilities, it is better to refrain from using them while identifying the causes of the “Blue Screen of Death.”
– Also, if after the “Blue Screen of Death” the computer no longer turns on, it freezes, or constantly restarts, it means there is no way to analyze the .dmp file.
You need to create a bootable USB drive, which you can use to boot and extract the .dmp files, then analyze them on another computer using the BlueScreen View utility.
As you already know, .dmp files are usually located in the “Windows” folder or its subfolders. After booting from the USB drive, find the files on the disk and copy them to the same USB drive.
To perform this procedure, you can use a bootable USB drive with the Dr.Web CureIt utility.
