1 How to Do a Complete Memory Dump in Windows 11 and Windows 102 How to Configure BSOD Dump Files in Windows 11 and Windows 103 How to Use Reliability Monitor to Analyze System Crashes and Freezes in Windows 11 / Windows 10
What are Windows system memory dump/crash dump files? A Windows 10/Windows 11 memory dump is a copy of your computer’s memory at the time of a crash. It’s because of this that you may have heard to them referred to as Windows 10 or Windows 11 crash dumps. Though it isn’t widely discussed, there are actually three types of memory dump in Windows 11 and Windows 10: a complete memory dump, a kernel memory dump, and a small memory dump. A small memory dump comes in at just 256kb, and contains only the barebones information about the crash. Information such as the error code, a list of loaded drives, and some kernel information. The kernel memory dump is about one-third of the size of your system’s physical memory. It contains only memory related to the Windows kernel and hardware extraction level, as well as memory allocated to kernel-mode drivers and programs. In most cases, the kernel memory dump will give everything you need. In some cases, however, you may need the final type: a complete memory dump. A complete memory dump will create a copy of all the information in your computer’s memory at the time of the crash. So, if you’re using 16GB of RAM, that will be a 16 GB file. In some cases, this can be used to better diagnose the source of the issue. Here’s how to generate a complete memory dump in Windows 11 / Windows 10:
How to Do a Complete Memory Dump in Windows 11 and Windows 10
How to Configure BSOD Dump Files in Windows 11 and Windows 10
If you’d like to find out more about Windows memory dumps, you can read our full guide on how to configure BSOD Dump Files in Windows 11 or Windows 10. This will better walk you through all the options and provide you with additional methods to enable them.
How to Use Reliability Monitor to Analyze System Crashes and Freezes in Windows 11 / Windows 10
If you don’t feel technically proficient enough to go trawling through crash dumps for an issue, you can try Reliability Monitor instead. Reliability Monitor is a great tool that displays all the important software events on your system. If your crash has its roots in a software issue, our Windows 10 / Windows 11 Reliability Monitor guide will help you find it.
