How To Manually Initiate a Windows Stop Error (BSOD) and Create a Dump File
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Occasionally you might need to force a Windows Stop error (also known as a Blue Screen of Death or BSOD) and take a crash dump in order to debug issues with the operating system. To be absolutely certain that a dump file will be created when a Stop error occurs, you can manually initiate a Stop error by creating a registry value and pressing a special sequence of characters; after Windows restarts, you can verify that the dump file was correctly created.
To initiate a crash dump manually, follow these steps:
1. Click Start and type Regedit. On the Start menu, right-click Regedit and click Run As Administrator. Respond to the User Account Control (UAC) prompt that appears.
2. In the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters.
3. On the Edit menu, click New, DWORD (32-bit) Value, and then add the following registry value:
- Value Name: CrashOnCtrlScroll
- Value: 1
4. Close the Registry Editor and then restart the computer.
5. Log on to Windows; while holding down the right Ctrl key, press the Scroll Lock key twice to initiate a Stop error: the system will issue a bug check 0xE2 (MANUALLY_INITIATED_CRASH).
Important: you cannot manually initiate a Stop error on a virtual machine that has virtual machine extensions installed.
See Also
Web Pages
Microsoft Knowledge Base Articles
- Windows feature lets you generate a memory dump file by using the keyboard (KB244139)
- How to generate a complete crash dump file or a kernel crash dump file by using an NMI on a Windows-based system (KB927069)
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