How to collect crash dump files on Windows 2008 and above versions

Description

How to collect crash dump files on Windows 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, etc...

Overview:

What happened to Dr. Watson in Windows 2008? Dr. Watson was replaced with Problem Reports and Solutions / Windows Error Reporting.

Troubleshooting

During the course of NetBackup troubleshooting, it might be necessary to analyze why a NetBackup process has performed an Application Fault.

When an application produces a fault within Windows 2008 and newer, a .dmp file is not produced with the default Windows settings. You will need to configure the OS to produce and store .dmp files.

Solution

For Windows 2008 and newer, follow these steps as per this Microsoft Article: Collecting User-Mode Dumps - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wer/collecting-user-mode-dumps

1. Launch the Windows Registry Editor: regedit
2. Navigate into HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting
3. Create a new Key called LocalDumps
4. Select LocalDumps and create three new entries:
   • A. DumpFolder of type REG_EXPAND_SZ give it a path value of an existing folder where you want the crash dump files to appear when an event occurs.
   • B. DumpCount of type REG_DWORD give it a value of decimal 10.
   • C. DumpType of type REG_DWORD give it a value of decimal 2.

Note: No reboot is required to activate these keys.

Recreate the fault and provide these items to Veritas Support:

1. The crash dump files produced in the configured DumpFolder.
2. The OS Event Logs (also collectable via the NBSU utility).
3. The NetBackup Log file for the process which produced the fault.
4. Any additional evidence requested by the Technical Support Engineer.

Note: If no Dump logs are created, the issue is not related to the crash.