re: irql not less or equal - Memory Dump
Tuesday, May 13, 2003 at 7:25 pm
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by stone
(1 messages posted)
Here is a little insight to clear up Memory Dump's (I hope this answer's your question
albert, and sorry if it is a little long):
Ok, I will try to explain this in simple terms (Disclaimer: :) I give no 100% guarantee
(it doesn't need to be 100% accurate to get the point across) to this as I am typing
this off the top of my head, and I must remember back to my low level assembler programming
classes. I do assert that it willl give the unknowing peoples a general idea of Core
Dump's, and why they are USELESS to worry about) (Sorry to those of you who do not
need such simple terms and description, but not every body has a Bachelores degree
in Computer Science), :)
A DUMP OF PHYSICAL MEMORY, or "Core Dump" as I will call it (that is the original
name given to it by computer scientist's and engineers.) is simply a transcript of
what was in memory at the time of the error (Word for word, and bit for bit).
To start my explaination, you must know that each program that run's on your computer,
is stored to memory while running. And each program is allocated what is called it's
own "Page" of memory the moment the program is started. Part of this page is allocated
for the instructions of the program itself (the step, by step instructions the processor
executes at the binary (machine code) level), and part is allocated for the actual
data of the program (the temporary variables, such as your current score in your
Solitaire game, or perhap's a number representing how many times a loop in the program
has completed itself.). Each program is only supposed to access it's own page of
memory.
If a program accesses out side of it's memory, and into unallocated memory, or some
other prgam's memory, this generates a page fault. (generally terminating the program.)
Some Kernel's will perform a Core Dump of such mishap's, and leave a "Core File"
on your harddisk, which is the exact transcript of the affected pages of memory (or
sometimes the entire content's of your memory).
Another time that a Core Dump is performed is when there is a conflict involving
(but not limited too)interupt's (IRQ's). This generally is more serious than page
faults, and basically requires a reboot of the system. (That is basically what this
thread refers to, the fault generating the BSOD).
The Core File generated is used by computer programmer's and computer scientist's
to find out what was happening at the time of the error. (IT IS USED FOR DEBUGGING).
They use it to read the instructions of the program, and follow through step, by
step to see what they did wrong.
I hope this help's. (For those of you who know alot about Core Dump's, I know this
is very general, and does not consider all the cases, but who cares. For the general
purposes of this thread, it helps all the people who are worried about the word's
"DUMP OF PHYSICAL MEMORY" being a bad thing to realize that it is only there to help
DEBUG the problem.) :)
Note to general user's: the core file is pretty much useless to you, unless you know
assembler programming and machine code, and is only there because some programmers
at microsft thought it would help them debug problems. (Which it does). but it mostly
just wastes harddrive space. The problem I have experienced with core dump's is that
it sometimes (rarely) leaves your hardrive in read/write mode when the computer want's
to reset, therefore corrupting the FAT on your harddisk (if your are using FAT/FAT32)
I have had this problem happen on a few machines in the past, which is why I run
my OS on an NTFS partition which is slightly more forgiving in such circumstances.
My suggestion is to turn off the coredump as well as auto restart in windows xp.
For those of you who do not know how to do this:
1. Right click on "My Computer".
2. Select "Properties".
3. Select the "Advanced" tab.
4. Look for the "Startup and Recovery" section on that page, and click on "Settings".
5. In the new window that open's, uncheck the "Automatically restart" box.
6. In side the "Write debugging information" box, click the down arrow in the selection
box and select "(none)".
7. Hit the "O.K." button on both open windows.
(I believe windows will ask you to restart)
This will prevent annoying mysterious restarts of your system. If you have a system
as fast as mine, you never see the BSOD pop up before it reset's, so you are left
wondering what the heck happened. :S
albert: In window's you will only recieve the "BEGINNING DUMP OF PHYSICAL MEMORY"
message if you recieve a Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD), which has been explained to
death in this thread. Personnaly, in my opinion, the problem with your cable connection
is a conflicting IRQ. Like has been stated above, try changing around your hardware
setup.
On Sunday, May 11, 2003 at 11:01 pm, albert wrote:
>This may be of some use. My problem started when Telstra changed my connection from
>telephone line to Cable. The deny is has anything to do with them of course but
their
>harware is shaing an IRQ with another program. I re-loaded the drivers and it seems
>to have gone away but I an concerned about the message "BEGINNING DUMP OF PHYSICAL
>MEMORY".
>Does any one know what that implies? Thanks.
>
>
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