A+: Auto Restart Errors
An Auto Restart error is a STOP/BSOD error that immediately reboots the
computer. There is no difference between an Auto Restart error and a
STOP/BSOD error itself. The difference is that a STOP/BSOD error
triggers auto restart on systems that are configured to restart the
computer when a STOP error occurs.
When a stop error occurs, Windows will write debugging information to the hard drive for later analysis with programs like Dumpchk.exe; this debugging information is essentially the contents of RAM. The default setting in Windows XP is to only write a portion of the contents of RAM, known as a “Small memory dump”; this is written to
If a system needs to be available at all times and
STOP/BSOD errors are rare, it might be preferable to configure the
system to restart automatically (the default is to leave the system
stopped until it is manually restarted). To change this option, follow
these steps:
Step 1. Open the System Properties window.
Step 2. Click the Advanced tab.
Step 3. Click Settings under the Startup and Recovery section.
Step 4. To enable auto restart, click the empty checkbox for Automatically Restart under the System Failure section. To disable auto restart if it is already enabled, clear this checkbox.
To enable diagnosis of a STOP/BSOD error when auto
restart is enabled, make sure the Write an Event to the System Log
option is enabled.
When a STOP error is saved to the System Log, it is listed with the
type set as Information (not as Error, as you might expect). To find the
event, search for events with the source listed as Save Dump. The STOP
error will be listed thus:
Look up the error number to find the solution.The system has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was (error number).
When a stop error occurs, Windows will write debugging information to the hard drive for later analysis with programs like Dumpchk.exe; this debugging information is essentially the contents of RAM. The default setting in Windows XP is to only write a portion of the contents of RAM, known as a “Small memory dump”; this is written to
%systemroot%\Minidump .
Or you could configure Windows to do a Kernel memory dump, which is the
default in Windows Vista. The Kernel memory dump is saved as the file %systemroot\MEMORY.DMP
which is larger than the
minidump file. This is where the phrase “My computer just took a
dump...” comes from! For more information on how to analyze the
debugging information resulting from these stop errors, see the
following link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263.
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