Windows Error Reporting

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As mentioned in Chapter 3, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 include a facility called Windows Error Reporting, which facilitates the automatic submission of process and system crashes to Microsoft (or an internal error reporting server) for analysis. This feature is enabled by default, but it can be modified by changing Savedump's behavior, which takes the additional step of determining whether the system is configured to send a crash dump to Microsoft (or a private server, explained further in the "Online Crash Analysis" section later in the chapter) for analysis on a reboot following a crash. The Error Reporting dialog box, which you access from the Advanced tab of the Control Panel's System applet, is shown in Figure 14-5. This dialog box allows you to configure the system's error reporting settings, which are stored in the registry under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\PCHealth\ErrorReporting.

Figure 14-5. Error Reporting configuration dialog box


After rebooting from a crash, Savedump checks several values under the ErrorReporting key, including Showui, DoReport, and IncludeKernelFaults. If all three values are true, Savedump takes the following steps for preparing to send a crash dump report to the Microsoft Online Crash Analysis (OCA) site (or, if configured, an internal error reporting server):

  1. If the type of dump it generated was not a minidump, it extracts a minidump from the dump file and stores it in the default location of \Windows\Minidumps.

  2. It writes the name of the minidump file to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\PCHealth\Error-Reporting\KernelFaults.

  3. It adds a command to execute Dumprep (\Windows\System32\Dumprep.exe) to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run so that Dumprep is executed during the first user's logon to the system.

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    Microsoft Windows Internals
    Microsoft Windows Internals (4th Edition): Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000
    ISBN: 0735619174
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2004
    Pages: 158

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