Dump Switch Support for Windows
May 18, 2006
Ah! I finally came across this again… I’d been looking for it:
Yes, it’s a schematic of a NMI switch which fits into a PCI slot, and it’s provided by Microsoft. Quite nifty, in my opinion.
Also, add DWORD CrashOnCtrlScroll set to a value of 1 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters to enable manual crashing when holding the right CTRL key and pressing Scroll Lock twice.
(This is documented for my purposes.)
You don’t need a switch or keystroke combination to make Windows dump. In fact, Windows’s buggy behavior would probably cause it NOT to dump on demand. Wouldn’t that be hilarious?
Uhh, never troubleshot a real problem, eh?
Define real problem. I’m not that much for the coding side of things, though I’ve had my fair share of blown caps on the mobo to replace, cards mysteriously not working, “unremovable” back doors/Trojans/rootkits, and my recent favorite, a hard drive controller card that seems to work just fine until you attempt to format the hard drive as reiserfs, at which point the drive magically disappears.
I certainly don’t hold that my Vast Array of Certifications makes me superior to anyone, because they’re BS and certainly haven’t helped me get a job (yet), and I’m sufficiently sarcastic and cynical about almost everything computer-related, because I’ve seen enough problems that theoretically should not exist, unexpected modes of failure, and paradoxical behavior. Hence the crack about Windows not dumping when you’d need it to. But I submit your skills are above mine, because I haven’t gotten into tinkering with circuits or coding — those things interest me, but not enough for me to really get into them right now.
Oh, hrm. I guess I’m just confused by how you ended up here, heh.
For what it’s worth, my machines don’t crash. Ever. Unless something is wrong… And being able to force a dump is a big part of figuring out the root cause of something, especially when it’s a driver problem. Then you can fix the problem, and no more problems. :)
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sarahmonstr and ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
alizarincrimson. Makes for interesting reading.
I know about core dumps, it’s mostly that they’re not of much use to me as I don’t have all the tools or coding knowledge to work with them, though I can pick up enough hints to isolate the general cause, which is good enough for most work. Anyway, I prefer mucking about and doing things the hard way. :)
That is ace, man. Much to l33t for it to be of use to me, ever – but its *DAMN* ace! :D
Hmmmm…. now I’m getting evil thoughts about substituting the switch for an IR detector and spontaneously crashing unsuspecting cow-orkers. Hmmmm….