Figuring out Windows XP Crashes

I recently "upgraded" to Windows XP from Windows 2000, and I'm getting system crashes more than I was under Win2K. It's not that often by Windows standards, maybe every few days, but the problem is I can't get any idea of what the crash is, because the event that Windows writes to the system log looks like this:

Error code 000000d1, parameter1 f563e4f6, parameter2 00000002, parameter3 00000000,

parameter4 f563e4f6.



For more information, see Help and Support Center at

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

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That's just wonderful. Under Windows 2000, it would at least tell me what DLL or SYS file was at fault, now I get a bunch of fscking hex numbers that I can't do anything with. Sure, Windows invites you to submit the crash to their system, and when you do, it tells you "Oh, this is in one of your drivers. But we're not going to tell you which one. Sorry!" I don't know if this is some not-so-sneaky way to rake in more support dollars, but it's really frustrating to not know which driver or program to replace or remove in order to get system stability. I don't expect the kind of uptime my Linux box gets, but I'd sure like to see the >1 month I'd get with Win2K instead of crashes 2-3 times a week with XP.

So, does anyone know of any other way I can get more information on where my XP crashes are coming from?

First driver I would suspect is the video card driver.

<shake> <shake> <shake> <flip> <float>



Sorry, I could not resist...

Suspect, yes. But why the fsck can't the OS tell me that like it used to? This is a Matrox G400 using the latest driver in an almost totally clean installation. My Matrox drivers were flawless under Win2K. I can go back to older versions, but I'd like a real indication that it is indeed the graphics card driver and not one of the dozen other drivers in my system.

Some googling found this: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/t1029628557

Interestingly, it implies that XP might (under certain circumstances) be vulnerable to memory corruption that other versions of Windows are not. Try memtest86.

It also tells you how to turn off the automatic reboot, which might provide you with more information.

Also check out this Microsoft page that provides some hints for using the dumpchk program for looking at minidump files.

Wow, not sure how you found that one, but thanks for the link. I'll disable automatic reboot and give memtest86 a shot when I get home.

Ooh, perfect. Exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks.

Ha, good one!

Thanks, Paul, you're as helpful as the BSOD that your support sphere mocks.