“Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) problems are frustrating and time consuming. They can happen again and again as you restart the system and to recover from it. If you are lucky, you might not have to reformat the system, because that will erase all your important data. Two general reasons behind BSOD errors are a hardware failure (hard disk crash, damaged SATA cable, RAM), or a software failure (Corrupt File System Files, BIOS settings, Malfunctioned programs, Virus attack).

After every crash, the operating system records the information stating the reason of crash, date and time, corrupted driver location, and lines of code to the system minidump folders located at C:\Windows\Minidump. If you can’t find the files at their default location, that means someone has altered the location or renamed it, and you’ll have to correct a few Windows settings.

Follow the instructions below to configure Windows so that Windows can create this specific folder and record the information whenever BSOD errors to your system:

For Windows XP

Right click on ‘My Computer’ and go to properties, alternatively you can go to control panel and double click on ‘system’ icon.

Find the ‘Advanced’ tab and then ‘Startup & Recovery’ frame. Click on ‘Settings’ located under ‘Startup and Recovery’ frame and find the section named ‘Write debugging information’ and then set the value from drop down menu to ‘Small memory dump(64 KB)’

To confirm, Click ‘OK’

For Windows 7

All the steps here are the same as Windows XP, but in order to find ‘System properties’ tab, You have to go at ‘Control panel’ and then ‘System & Security’ and then ‘System’.

Change in the registry
Make the following changes in your registry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl]
“CrashDumpEnabled”=dword:00000003

After that, you have to restart the system to make your changes take effect.

Once you are able to find your minidump files, you’ll have to download Debugging Tools for Windows including WinDbg to decipher the information contained in the them, because the they can’t be open using notepad.

==== About The Author ====

Oliver is a computer hardware/software geek and would love to explore the information about latest technologies, PC tips and tricks. He is currently working with Stellar Data Recovery which is the most famous and trusted name in the field of Data Recovery .
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