Types of Crash Dump Files

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Windows Mobile SupportedWindows Embedded CE Supported

8/27/2008

You can set the type of dump file generated, balancing the need for more information with the space available for storing it. Larger dumps provide more information, but embedded devices often have restricted amounts of memory available.

Typically, the Error Reporting system generates a system dump. However, if the size of the dump file generated would be larger than the space allocated to it, the system generates a much smaller context dump.

OEMs set registry values that control the type of crash dump to be generated and the amount of memory to reserve for that purpose. Each type of dump follows the same file format.

Error Reporting can generate three distinct types of crash dumps:

Type of Dump File Size Description

Context dumps

4 KB - 64 KB.
  • Information about the crashing system
  • Exception that initiated the crash
  • Context record of the faulting thread
  • Module list, limited to the faulting threads of the owner process
  • Thread list, limited to the faulting threads of the owner process
  • Callstack of the faulting thread
  • 64 bytes of memory above and below the instruction pointer of the faulting thread
  • Stack memory dump of the faulting thread, truncated to fit a 64 KB limit

System dumps

64 KB - several MB
  • All information in a Context dump
  • Callstacks and context records for all threads
  • Complete module, process, and thread lists for the entire device
  • 2048 bytes of memory above and below the instruction pointer of the faulting thread
  • Global variables for the process that was current at the time of the crash

Complete dumps

All physical memory plus at least 64 KB
  • All information in a system dump
  • A complete dump of all used memory

See Also

Concepts

Dump File Bucketing