How do I enable kernel only crash dumps?

A. In Windows NT 4.0 when a crash occurs the entire memory is dumperout to file memory.dmp to aid in the debugging of a crash. In reality its onlyinformation stored within the kernel portion of memory that is needed andWindows 2000 introduces the ability to only dump out the kernel area of memory.

Why? Well if we have 128MB of memory and the machine crashes we get a 128MBfile, big, but not to big to FTP to Microsoft. Now imagine you have a huge data storeserver with terabytes of memory, while Microsoft has the ability to accept filesthese big a smaller file would be better for everyone.

Using the 128MB machine dumping out the kernel only portion of memory wouldresult in a dump of around 35MB, so about 27% of the original file size.

To enable kernel only crash dumps perform the following:

You can also set by changing values under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlCrashControlkey. CrashDumpEnabled should be set to 2 for a kernel dump, 3 for a mini-memorydump, and DumpFile should be set to %SystemRoot%Memory.dmp.