What is "dumping physical memory"?

[xpeter]

When running Windows 2000 Advanced Server while playing a
movie using ATI DVD player sometimes the application freezes
and the blue screen of Win2k says dumping physical memory
and then restarts.

what does it mean?

 

[VBboy]

http://forums.anandtech.com/message...=533749&highlight_key=y&keyword1=dump

 

[xpeter]

sorry I still didn't the idea of what exactly the
dumping phisical memory stands for.
what does it mean for windows when it's dumping the memory?
any ideas?

 

[Pariah]

All it means is that everything that was stored in RAM when the system crashed is written to a file on your hard drive before rebooting. The purpose being, if you were working on a something mission critical that wasn't saved you may be able to recover some of the data and it also has applications for people debugging what might have gone wrong.

 

[xpeter]

I see, so blue screen under Win2K is only associated with
a software failure the same as when using Win9x/ME?

 

[Pariah]

correct

 

[Athlon4all]

Here's what it is. Windows 2000 (And any NT OS) is copying the contents of the physical RAM so u can debug it and figure out what caused the BSOD. It is not mean't for data retrival.

 

[xpeter]

thanx for your explanations, now I know what does it
mean! 😉