How to analyze BSOD dumps on Windows XP/Vista?

How do you mean? Are you saying you see the BSOD, and you want to be able to read it and know what caused it?

If that’s what you’re saying – you’ll usually get an error code or something similar when it BSOD’s although you might not have time to read it, but if you do the solution can then be easily found by just googling the error code you got.

If that’s not what you’re saying sorry I misinterpreted!

I know that BSOD’s can write minidumps when they crash but you need an application that can view the contents of this file.

As Jenkins said, one way (Probably easier) is to just view the error data when the BSOD comes up. You will need to disable ‘Automatic restart on failure’ to view it though. To do this in XP or 2003:-

Right click ‘My Computer’, click properties, go to the ‘Advanced’ tab, click on ‘Settings’ under the ‘Startup and Recovery’ section, Ensure that ‘Automatically Restart’ does not have a tick in it, click OK.

I’m unsure of Vista, perhaps same method? This way you should be able to write the error code down and go do a google on that.

I am looking to view the BSOD’s minidumps.

Check here: http://www.pchell.com/support/minidumps.shtml

It has a nice guide on how to configure them to be saved, where and how to view them.

If the analyses of the STOP code and or minidump doesn’t help you than, going back to a restore point date before the BSOD started, could help you out.
In XP Start / Help and support / Undo changes to your computer with system restore.
After that keep a good eye on driver updates.

What also helped for me in the past, was to run the hardware diagnostic tools delivered with the PC to analyse the hardware area mentioned in the STOP code. And if needed replace the faulty hardware.

Last line of defence is to reinstall.

Different STOP errors and codes will indicate different things.

99% of the time BSODs are caused by hardware(usually RAM) or drivers.

On the blue screen it may have the name of the file/driver causing the BSOD. That is the clue to fixing the BSOD

Good Luck
Blam

add ‘mvp’ to your search terms:

http://google.com/search?q=bsod+dump+mvp