What does memory dump mean

Machine Intelligence. Techopedia Terms. Connect with us. Sign up. Term of the Day. Best of Techopedia weekly. News and Special Offers occasional. Memory Dump. Techopedia Explains Memory Dump. What Does Memory Dump Mean? In Windows 8, the screen has been designed to be more generic, but still lets you know that your computer is saving information on the crash.

A short summary of the technical issue is also presented in small print near the bottom of the screen. Although Windows 8 supports four different types of system memory dumps, by default it creates a file called an automatic memory dump. Unless you've changed your system's settings, it saves the memory dump to your computer's root directory and names it "Memory. The kernel is the part of the OS that sits between the computer's hardware and the software that runs on it.

Windows 8 supports three other types of dump as well. The Complete Memory Dump saves everything that is in the computer's memory plus one extra megabyte. Kernel Memory Dumps are like automatic dumps, but with everything that the kernel controls, instead of just showing the kernel's specific area of memory. They can be used to help diagnose and identify the problem that led to the crash in the first place.

Windows can create several different types of memory dumps. You can access this setting by opening the Control Panel, clicking System and Security, and clicking System. Click Advanced system settings in the sidebar, click the Advanced tab, and click Settings under Startup and recovery.

Complete memory dump: A complete memory dump is the largest type of possible memory dump. This contains a copy of all the data used by Windows in physical memory. Kernel memory dump: A kernel memory dump will be much smaller than a complete memory dump. Microsoft says it will typically be about one-third the size of the physical memory installed on the system. As Microsoft puts it :. It only includes memory allocated to the Windows kernel and hardware abstraction level HAL , as well as memory allocated to kernel-mode drivers and other kernel-mode programs.

For most purposes, this crash dump is the most useful. It is significantly smaller than the Complete Memory Dump, but it only omits those portions of memory that are unlikely to have been involved in the crash.

Small memory dump kb : A small memory dump is the smallest type of memory dump. It contains very little information — the blue-screen information, a list of loaded drivers, process information, and a bit of kernel information. It can be helpful for identifying the error, but offers less detailed debugging information than a kernel memory dump. Automatic memory dump: This is the default option, and it contains the exact same information as a kernel memory dump.

The page file must be large enough to contain the memory data. These dump files exist to provide you with information about the cause of the system crash. Crash dumps are still useful. The developers in charge of the software can use the memory dump to see exactly what was going on on your computer at the time of the crash, hopefully allowing them to pin down and fix the problem. Minidump files are useful to pretty much everyone because they contain basic information like the error message associated with a blue-screen of death.

Both types of dump files have the file extension. DMP file. You can see the exact driver files involved in a crash, which can help identify the cause of the problem. DMP by default. Windows is configured to overwrite this file each time a new memory dump is created, so you should only have one MEMORY. DMP file taking up space. DMP file to identify and fix a problem on your own. You can delete these. DMP file of MB or more taking up space on your system drive.

Windows helps you automatically delete these files. CCleaner and other similar tools can automatically delete memory dumps, too.