physical memory dumping to disc

[gateT]

Have heard about this but never had it happen on any of my systems-until today.

Get blue screen with message that physical memory is dumping to disc.

I guess what I need to know before I start trouble shooting is what causes this to happen.

Is it a system breakdown/fault,or can it happen on a properly running system that is trying to process to much info to fast?

Like I said I need to know what is really happening to cause this before I start looking at a fix.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Need more input.

OS?

If Win2k or XP, what is the error code in the Event log?

 

[bsobel]

Is it a system breakdown/fault

Yes. Most likely it's driver related (e.g. buggy driver for some device)

or can it happen on a properly running system that is trying to process to much info to fast?

No. But I'll add that sometimes heavy load can show a failure that wouldn't normally happen under 'normal' loading. But there is nothing 'special' about processing 'too much' that would generically cause a failure, it's just a condition that is more likely to show the failure.

Like I said I need to know what is really happening to cause this before I start looking at a fix.

When the system BSOD there would have been some information at the top, an possibly an indication of what driver was involved (it would have said something like 'in xyyzz.sys' It's the xxyyzz part that would help us narrow down what may be the cause.

Bill

 

[gateT]

Running XPpro.

Didn't copy down error code(oops)

I think it was related to display driver.

What I kinda wanted to know is what tells the OS to dump memory? or is that a book in it's self.

Haven't had the problem again,just trying to understand what happened??

 

[bsobel]

What I kinda wanted to know is what tells the OS to dump memory? or is that a book in it's self.

Well, trying to squeeze this into a sentence or two. Device drivers run at a different protection level than 'normal' software, they are much lower and closer to the hardware than a normal application. When a normal application 'crashes' the OS generally cleans up the damage (removes the process from memory, closes any open file handles, etc). However, if a device driver has a bug it's literally part of the OS itself, so there isn't anything around to 'clean up' or worse to ensure that the bug didn't cause any damage elsewhere in the system. In these situations the kernel panics and performs a BSOD.

The BSOD itself is a special routine that is available in memory that requires little to no interaction with other components, hence almost no matter what it can switch to text mode, display it's status, and dump memory. The memory dumps themselves are only usefull to a developer trying to determine what happened, they provide (literally) a snapshot of the system at the moment the crash happened.

That help at all?
Bill

 

[kursplat]

That help at all?

YES ! thanks for a concise and to the point answer (as most of yours are)

 

[gateT]

Yep,now at least I have some idea what happened.

Thanks much!