How to create full Windows memory dumps

Introduction

If the operating system crashes, you may need to create full Windows memory dumps. See an example of a blue screen message:

If the product crashes, not the whole system, see Creating Process Dumps with ProcDump.

If the product hangs, see Creating Process Dumps with ProcDump or Creating a Userdump .

(!) If your system's RAM is 2 GB or less, please proceed as described in the Solution section of this article.

(!) If you system's RAM is more than 2 GB, you will need to edit Windows registry first to enable full memory dumps:

Enabling full Windows memory dumps in Windows registry:

1. Hit Start-Run and type in regedit

   

2. Navigate to:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl

   

3. Right-click on CrashDumpEnabled and select Modify:

   

4. Change the value to 1

   

5. Click OK.

Solution

(!) The generated full memory dumps will be of considerable size (e.g. 4 GB).

Setting Windows 2000/XP/2003 to create full memory dumps:

1. Right click on My Computer, choose Properties:

   

2. Select the Advanced tab:

   

3. Click Settings in the Startup and Recovery box:

   

4. Choose Complete memory dump in Write debugging information:

   

5. Close all the dialog windows by clicking OK buttons;
6. Reproduce the system crash;
7. The dump file will be created in the directory chosen in the Dump file directory box:

   

   The %SystemRoot% value is the location of the operating system folder. The default path on a clean installation depends upon the version of the operating system. By default in Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 it is \Windows. In Windows 2000 it is \WINNT.

Setting Windows 10/8/7/Vista/2008 to create full memory dumps:

1. Right click on Computer, choose Properties:

   

2. Select Advanced system settings:

   

3. Hit Settings in the Startup and Recovery box:

   

4. Choose Complete memory dump in Write debugging information:

   

5. Close all the dialog windows by clicking OK buttons;
6. Reproduce the system crash;
7. The dump file will be created in the directory chosen in the Dump file directory box:

   

   The %SystemRoot% value is the location of the operating system folder. The default path on a clean installation depends upon the version of the operating system. By default in Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7, 8 and 10 it is \Windows. In Windows 2000 it is \WINNT.

More information

(!) The generated memory dumps will be of considerable size (e.g. 4 GB). It is recommended to split the file into 2 GB archives. See Splitting Files to Send to Acronis Support.

An Acronis Support representative will provide you with a link to upload the files to Acronis FTP. See also Uploading Files to Acronis FTP Server.