How to set up a minidump for BSOD troubleshooting in Windows 10

[JamieKavanagh]

The Blue Screen of Death. Love it or loathe it, the BSOD is as much as part of Windows as the windows themselves. If you take a little time to learn how it works, you can quickly turn a ‘Stop: 0x00000000’ message into something much more meaningful. The first step in that quest in the minidump. Here is how to set up a minidump for BSOD troubleshooting in Windows 10.

Minidump files are automatically created when Windows crashes. They can contain useful clues to find out what caused the crash. Essential information when troubleshooting Windows 10. With a minidump file, you can find out the root cause of the issue so you can do something about it.

Set up a minidump for BSOD troubleshooting in Windows 10
Windows should automatically create a minidump every time it crashes. You should find it at C:\WINDOWS\Minidump. If your system isn’t creating them for some reason, here’s how to configure them.

1. Type ‘control panel’ in Search Windows.
2. Select System and Security, System and then Advanced System Settings.
3. Select the Advanced tab and Start-up and Settings under Start-up and Recovery.
4. Select Small memory dump in the lower part of the window to specify a minidump.

Set a minidump from the command prompt in Windows 10
For those of you who prefer typing to clicking, you can also set a minidump from a CMD window.

1. Open a CMD window as an administrator.
2. Type or paste ‘wmic RECOVEROS get DebugInfoType’ to see what dump type you have configured.
3. Type or paste ‘wmic RECOVEROS set DebugInfoType = 3’ to specify minidump.
4. Restart your computer for the change to take effect.

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