J.P.'s Blog

The NEXT time you see a bluescreen on your machine (hopefully a long time from now if ever), one tool you can use to take the mystery out of the problem is the windows debugger.

You can download the tool for free from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx

After it installs, just run it from the programs menu and select “Open Crash Dump” from the File menu. You will need to select the “Memory.DMP” file from c:\windows (or wherever your windows folder is).

When you get a “kd>” menu, just type “.symfix” <enter> followed by “!analyze –v” <enter>.

You shouls see a technical description of why the bluescreen occurred.

Sadly my media center has been crashing a lot lately with the below error: (which means I may need a new motherboard/processor/memory. :(

Loading Kernel Symbols
...............................................................
................................................................
..........................
Loading User Symbols

Loading unloaded module list
.....
1: kd> !analyze -v
*************************************
*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                       *
*                                                                             *
*************************************

WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR (124)
A fatal hardware error has occurred. Parameter 1 identifies the type of error
source that reported the error. Parameter 2 holds the address of the
WHEA_ERROR_RECORD structure that describes the error conditon.
Arguments:
Arg1: 00000000, Machine Check Exception
Arg2: 85a32024, Address of the WHEA_ERROR_RECORD structure.
Arg3: b2000000, High order 32-bits of the MCi_STATUS value.
Arg4: 1040080f, Low order 32-bits of the MCi_STATUS value.

Debugging Details:
------------------

BUGCHECK_STR:  0x124_GenuineIntel