Gathering Blue Screen Information After Memory Dump

ID: Q192463

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0

SUMMARY

The information below covers some steps you can take to gather more information about a blue screen error message. These steps will not always provide conclusive answers and may only be a symptom of another problem.

Event Log Messages

Set up your system to write an event log message with bugcheck information.

Windows NT Server 4.0 is set to write event log messages by default. Windows NT Workstation is not set by default. To set your system to write an event log message, click to select the "Write an event to the system log" check box located in the Recovery section of the Startup/Shutdown tab in System Properties. This will cause an event log message to be written to the system log.

Data contained in the event log message.

The description and format of the event log differs from the format displayed when the computer is writing the Memory.dmp file, but the majority of the information is the same. Below is an example of the event log.
```
      Event ID: 1001
      Source: Save Dump
      Description:
        The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was :
        0xc000021a (0xe1270188, 0x00000001, 0x00000000, 0x00000000).
        Microsoft Windows NT (v15.1381). A dump was saved in:
        C:\WINNT\MEMORY.DMP. 
```
This information contains the stop code 0xc000021a and the four parameters. These can be very useful when troubleshooting certain types of stop codes. The parameters will mean different things depending on what type of stop code it is. For information on what the parameters represent, search the Knowledge Base for the specific STOP code. Not all STOP code parameters are covered in the Knowledge Base.

Using Dumpchk.exe to Determine Memory Dump Information

If you use Dumpchk.exe from the Service Pack 3 CD, you can determine all of the above information as well as the address of the driver that generated the stop message. This information can often give you a direction to begin troubleshooting. Before you run Dumpchk.exe, be sure to adjust the properties of the command prompt so that the screen buffer size height is set to 999. This height will allow you to scroll back to see the output. Run Dumpchk.exe from the command prompt with the following syntax:

dumpchk.exe Memory.dmp

The following is an example of the portions of the output that are most useful.


   MachineImageType   i386
   NumberProcessors   1
   BugCheckCode      0xc000021a
   BugCheckParameter1   0xe1270188
   BugCheckParameter2   0x00000001
   BugCheckParameter3   0x00000000
   BugCheckParameter4   0x00000000

   ExceptionCode      0x80000003
   ExceptionFlags      0x00000001
   ExceptionAddress   0x8014fb84

As previously mentioned, not all sections will give the same information. This will depend on the type of STOP code. The information above tells us the STOP code (0xc000021a) and the parameters (0xe1270188, 0x00000001, 0x00000000, 0x00000000), as well as the address of the driver that called the exception (0x8014fb84). This address can be used to identify the driver name using the output from running Pstat.exe, which can be found on the resource kit.

Dumpchk.exe will also verify that the dump is valid.

Using Pstat.exe to Identify Driver Information

Pstat.exe, a resource kit utility, will give you a picture of the processes and drivers currently running on your system. For these purposes, the most useful information will be the list of loaded drivers that appears at the end of the output. All you need to do is run Pstat.exe from the command line. The information given by Pstat.exe can be piped to a file using the following sytax:

pstat.exe > filename

The following is an example of the driver list at the end of the output.


     ModuleName Load Addr   Code    Data   Paged           LinkDate
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   ntoskrnl.exe 80100000  270272   40064  434816 Sun May 11 00:10:39 1997
        hal.dll 80010000   20384    2720    9344 Mon Mar 10 16:39:20 1997
    aic78xx.sys 80001000   20512    2272       0 Sat Apr 05 21:16:21 1997
   SCSIPORT.SYS 801d7000    9824      32   15552 Mon Mar 10 16:42:27 1997
       Disk.sys 80008000    3328       0    7072 Thu Apr 24 22:27:46 1997
     CLASS2.SYS 8000c000    7040       0    1632 Thu Apr 24 22:23:43 1997
   INO_FLPY.SYS 801df000    9152    1472    2080 Tue May 26 18:21:40 1998
       Ntfs.sys 801e3000   68160    5408  269632 Thu Apr 17 22:02:31 1997
     Floppy.SYS f7290000    1088     672    7968 Wed Jul 17 00:31:09 1996
      Cdrom.SYS f72a0000   12608      32    3072 Wed Jul 17 00:31:29 1996
    Cdaudio.SYS f72b8000     960       0   14912 Mon Mar 17 18:21:15 1997
       Null.SYS f75c9000       0       0     288 Wed Jul 17 00:31:21 1996
     KSecDD.SYS f7464000    1280     224    3456 Wed Jul 17 20:34:19 1996
       Beep.SYS f75ca000    1184       0       0 Wed Apr 23 15:19:43 1997
   cs32ba11.SYS fcd1a000   52384   45344   14592 Wed Mar 12 17:22:33 1997
    msi8042.SYS f7000000   20192    1536       0 Mon Mar 23 22:46:22 1998
   mouclass.sys f7470000    1984       0       0 Mon Mar 10 16:43:11 1997
   kbdclass.sys f7478000    1952       0       0 Wed Jul 17 00:31:16 1996
   VIDEOPRT.SYS f72d8000    2080     128   11296 Mon Mar 10 16:41:37 1997
        ati.sys f7010000     960    9824   48768 Fri Dec 12 15:20:37 1997
        vga.sys f7488000     128      32   10784 Wed Jul 17 00:30:37 1996
       Msfs.SYS f7308000     864      32   15328 Mon Mar 10 16:45:01 1997
       Npfs.SYS f7020000    6560     192   22624 Mon Mar 10 16:44:48 1997
       NDIS.SYS fccda000   11744     704   96768 Thu Apr 17 22:19:45 1997
     win32k.sys a0000000 1162624   40064       0 Fri Apr 25 21:17:32 1997
        ati.dll fccba000  106176   17024       0 Fri Dec 12 15:20:08 1997
       Cdfs.SYS f7050000    5088     608   45984 Mon Mar 10 16:57:04 1997
   INO_FLTR.SYS fc42f000   29120   38176    1888 Tue Jun 02 16:33:05 1998
        TDI.SYS fc4a2000    4480      96     288 Wed Jul 17 00:39:08 1996
      tcpip.sys fc40b000  108128    7008   10176 Fri May 09 17:02:39 1997
      netbt.sys fc3ee000   79808    1216   23872 Sat Apr 26 21:00:42 1997
      el90x.sys f7320000   24576    1536       0 Wed Jun 26 20:04:31 1996
        afd.sys f70d0000    1696     928   48672 Thu Apr 10 15:09:17 1997
    netbios.sys f7280000   13280     224   10720 Mon Mar 10 16:56:01 1997
    Parport.SYS f7460000    3424      32       0 Wed Jul 17 00:31:23 1996
   Parallel.SYS f746c000    7904      32       0 Wed Jul 17 00:31:23 1996
     ParVdm.SYS f7552000    1312      32       0 Wed Jul 17 00:31:25 1996
     Serial.SYS f7120000    2560       0   18784 Mon Mar 10 16:44:11 1997
        rdr.sys fc385000   13472    1984  219104 Wed Mar 26 14:22:36 1997
        mup.sys fc374000    2208    6752   48864 Mon Mar 10 16:57:09 1997
        srv.sys fc24a000   42848    7488  163680 Fri Apr 25 13:59:31 1997
    PSCRIPT.DLL f9ec3000       0       0       0
    Fastfat.SYS f9e00000    6720     672  114368 Mon Apr 21 16:50:22 1997
      NTDLL.DLL 77f60000  237568   20480       0 Fri Apr 11 16:38:50 1997
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
          Total          2377632  255040 1696384

By using the starting address shown above under the "load addr" column, you can match the exception address to the driver name. Using 8014fb84 as an example, you can determine that Ntoskrnl.exe has the nearest load address below the exception address and is most likely the driver that called the exception. With this information, you can go to the Knowledge Base to look for known issues that match your situation.

REFERENCES

For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q129845 Blue Screen Preparation Before Contacting Microsoft

Q103059 Descriptions of Bug Codes for Windows NT

Additional query words: howto


Keywords          : 
Version           : WinNT:4.0
Platform          : winnt 
Issue type        : kbinfo

Last Reviewed: July 13, 1999