Dumping Physical Memory?! | Forums

[XyZspineZyX]

Hey, a couple days ago I ran dxdiag and suddenly my computer when blue, saying it was dumping my physical memory...well outta shear panic I pulled the plug on my sytem and rebooted her back up, then it wouldnt reboot saying that NTDLR was missing (idk if those are the exact letters) but the next day it ran fine...

now I'm afraid to run dxdiag again, any ideas what happend?

(if you've noticed, i have posted this in tech-support by accident, which this problem has nothing to do with RvS)

sry bout that

[XyZspineZyX]

Hey, a couple days ago I ran dxdiag and suddenly my computer when blue, saying it was dumping my physical memory...well outta shear panic I pulled the plug on my sytem and rebooted her back up, then it wouldnt reboot saying that NTDLR was missing (idk if those are the exact letters) but the next day it ran fine...

now I'm afraid to run dxdiag again, any ideas what happend?

(if you've noticed, i have posted this in tech-support by accident, which this problem has nothing to do with RvS)

sry bout that

[XyZspineZyX]

Thats called a BSOD, or Blue Screen of Death. It probably occurred becuase your system was forced into an infinite loop, or somehow became unstable. By "dumping physical memory", it means that every entity loaded into RAM is saved into a file on the drive for debugging purposes. The problem with this is, sometimes the system "blindly" dumps the file anywhere on the drive, sometimes overwriting important system files. I dont know if this problem was fixed yet in the barrage of XP hotfixes, but a while back I was forced to reinstall XP 3 times in the span of two weeks because of that.

[XyZspineZyX]

seraph5390 wrote:
- is, sometimes the system "blindly" dumps the file
- anywhere on the drive, sometimes overwriting
- important system files.

Never heard of such. A memory dump in XP is either small (64MB), kernel, or complete (a file the size of however much RAM you have). The file is written by default to
%SystemRoot%\Minidump
and there is an option to overwrite an existing file (which may or may not be grayed out).

It has worked this way since I started using XP (pro, mind you). I have never had it NOT do that, or dump a random file or overwrite a system file. And I've had several BSODs (all of which were more related to what I was doing than to the OS - I could reproduce them at will).

Maybe it only affected Home? Maybe I've just been lucky? Maybe it was fixed in one of the very very early hot fixes?

*shrug*

For the original poster, pulling the plug without a proper shutdown generally = bad. In the case of a BSOD, it pretty much makes 0 difference - by the time you see that screen, it's done. And it's just an error screen, no need to panic.

If it can't find NTLDR, that's the file that tells the OS how to boot, and that's bad. You can usually stick the drive in another machine and get the data off of it, but the OS is pretty much screwed. Now why it would say that when you tried to reboot, then work fine the next day... Your guess is as good as mine without knowing a good deal more about your system.

Message Edited on 07/26/0309:54PM by ghost397

[XyZspineZyX]

Heh, you're lucky that its never happened to you. Way back when, when i first installed XP pro, it would BSOD everytime i attempted to run any 3D-driven program, stating an infinite loop from nv_disp.dll or something like that. It was a very common error for nVidia card users, and i believe resulted from a bad power supply. The worst part was, everytime it would BSOD, XP would no longer boot up, stating corruption in one of the main system files. Whether or not the memory dump actually overwrote any of the system files, i dont know, but when i disabled it, it never became a problem again.

[XyZspineZyX]

yeah, I've had to reinstall on XP a couple of times as well from crashes. Mine where from aggressive o/c trying to push the system and major system files got corrupted on a crash and reboot.

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[XyZspineZyX]

seraph5390 wrote:

- common error for nVidia card users,

Ha! There's your problem. I've always been an ATI user. Kidding, kidding. Actually, the two main BSODs I was able to regularly recreate were with the video and sound subsystems. The video one was mostly a result of using beta drivers that were unstable in combination with a buggy version of DirectX before they got the fix out. Sound was pretty much the same, except the drivers just sucked to begin with and it took them like six months to do anything about it.

- and i believe resulted from a bad power supply.

That seems odd to me - a problem with a PSU would affect any system, not one with just a certain kind of vid card. Well, unless that vid card was very very picky about it's power tolerances. I think it would be more likely caused by drivers and DirectX not getting along.

- was, everytime it would BSOD, XP would no longer
- boot up, stating corruption in one of the main
- system files. Whether or not the memory dump
- actually overwrote any of the system files, i dont
- know, but when i disabled it, it never became a
- problem again.

A corrupted system file in a crash is one thing - it being overwritten is another. Yes, I was lucky that I never lost any critical files in crashes and have yet to need to reinstall my OS. Although I've wanted to anyway for about six months now and just haven't gotten around to it. I have, on other systems, lost critical files (mostly on NT4 systems), and it is quite a pain to rebuild every time. That's why I started making drive images when I was still doing that sort of thing regularly.

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[XyZspineZyX]

iv had that happen to me. but i found if u push the restart button it helps. it also only seems to do it on me on certain servers. so try something different. but the cause is ur video driver. trust me. my comp crashed and when i got it back running i updated video drive while at it and it never done it since. u might want to see if u can up grade drivers. wouldnt hurt