Category Archives: Crash Dump

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Unexpected system crashes and red screen of death (RSOD)

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Having recently upgraded my system I kept finding that my computer would unexpectedly restart, games would crash out and after playing almost any game for 15-30 minutes I would get a Red Screen along with buzzing and then the computer would restart.

As with any issue the route cause and resolution might be different for you but I found that disabling XMP (Extreme Memory Profiles) completely resolved my issues.  XMP clocks upthe memory in your system, sometimes above what the manufacturer recommend so this would be classed as overclocking.

Other troubleshooting steps that you could perform if this does not resolve your issue

Check to see if any other components in your system are overclocked (CPU, GPU or Memory).

Check your system and component temperatures and ensure that all fans are running correctly.

Test your Hard Disk Drive using manufacturers or third party diagnostics software.

Test your Memory using manufacturers or third party diagnostics software.

Update the system BIOS

Update drivers (especially Chipset and GPU)

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Troubleshoot a Blue Screen of Death BSOD or Crash Dump on a Microsoft Windows Operating System

It’s probably the thing we all dread most, evereything has been working great for weeks/months/years and then suddenly your machine starts randomly crashing to a Blue Screen of Death or BSOD

All is not lost though as Windows will often generate its own crash dump a report of what happened to cause the crash, this is often invaluable when it comes to finding the cause and fixing it.

A company called Nirsoft offer a great little utility called Blue Screen View, you can download it from here ttp://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

This program will automatically analyse the default Mini Dump and Crash Dump locations and then pull back a summary of the driver or system file that was most likley the cause of your crash.  In many cases it’s then just a simple case of removing the offending software, updating/downgrading the device driver or installing a software patch/hotfix.