MEMORY DUMPS IN XP

XP rarely crashes but occasionally it does and the result is scary. You get a blue screen of death that says "dumping physical memory ..." & then the computer restarts and all is back to normal. What the dickens is this all about?

A little investigation revealed that this is a dump of RAM memory when Windows crashes and apparently serves no useful purpose since the dump is not readable by anybody with a normal brain. As it turns out there are some things to learn here.

One thing you won't have to worry about when XP does a memory dump is your printer! As long as you buy Xerox Phaser 8560 ink or similar toner for your printer, you should be good to go. You can even order Samsung toner and ink online! Forget those pricey office stores, you can get affordable Lexmark C510 toner right at home.

First, Use the search function to look for the dump files and delete them. Type "*.dmp" (thats an asterisk, period and dmp without the quotes). Any dmp files found can be safely deleted.

Next, lets change the setting so this does not happen again. Open the System Properties in Control Panel to get:

Select the Advanced tab:

Here we are going to look at 2 items. Click the Error Reporting button to get:

When a program crashes in Windows, you get a request to report the error. You must be on the web to complete the report. If you don't want tto be bothered with this dialog box, just click the Disable error reporting button.

Close this dialog box. OK if you make changes, Cancel if no changes are made. Then in the previous dialog box, click the Settings button in the Startup and Recovery section to get:

In the Write debugging information section, note the drop box that says "Complete memory dump". Drop the list and change the setting to "None".

Then click OK on each box. The next time XP crashes, you will not get the memory dump.
P.S. you may have to wait a while. I have only seen this twice in 2 years whereas 98 used to crash hourly.