Forum: The Classroom
Topic: quick win2k q's
started by: Vigilante

Posted by Vigilante on May 01 2001,07:55
I should know this crap, but... feh.

I went poking around to find the missing 300 megs on my C drive. I ended finding an enormous file called user.dmp in documents and settings\all users\dr watson\. I'm assuming this is an error log for crashed programs (my only win2k gripe has always been how it takes forever for a program to finish crashing... heh); I am further assuming that it is safe to just give it the ol' shift-delete? As opposed to some other way of emptying it...

I also found (in docs and settings\user\local settings\temp) a large store of various tmp and exe files. I routinely clear out winnt\temp, but I never knew about this one. Also safe to clear?


Posted by askheaves on May 01 2001,08:00
You're clear on both counts.

Good luck!


Posted by Vigilante on May 01 2001,09:34
Thankily dankily. Now I'll have to remember to check those before they get out of hand again...

On that note, can I stop win2k from generating its bloody error logs? even when I hit cancel, it takes 2 minutes for sonique to end, and well over 5 minutes for half life.


Posted by Observer on May 01 2001,11:31
Out of curiosity, what are your system specs for your Win2k setup? Processor and mem.

I've been told that the minimum specs to get decent performance is P-200/64MB, though it's barely tolerable on my laptop. Had to turn off a lot of features.

------------------
A good programmer is someone who looks both ways on a one-way street


Posted by jim on May 01 2001,11:39
You may want to download WinDebug from Microsoft and run the user.dmp file through it, and figure out what is causing the problem.

It should lead you to a specif .dll file that is causing the exception. From there go < here > and enter the filename into Microsoft DLL helpdatabase. It'll tell you what versions of the file are available and where to get the latest.

For instance you may have a shared .dll that IE installed, but the latest version of that file is actually bundled with Visual Studios .NET edition. You can than replace the crapped out DLL with a newer version, or even a checked version. This way if the newer version doesn't solve your problem, then the checked version will help you determine if you have heap corruption or not.


Just remember, it's faster in the long run to figure out what's causing your problems, rather than just ignoring them.

[edit]If you already know what application is causing your problem, go to Microsoft's site and download Process Dump. It's a service that eats a little resources, but you can have it monitor a specific EXE file, and when it crashes, you'll get an application.dmp file that you can debug. [/edit]

------------------
jim
Beauty is in the eye of the Beer Holder
< Brews and Cues >

This message has been edited by jim on May 02, 2001 at 06:42 AM


Posted by Greasemonk on May 01 2001,13:28
Also I think the user.dmp will refuse to defrag when you run defragmenter. I had one that was 500MB one time and ran defrag and it would do it.

------------------
All that I know there was no God for me
Force that shatters all, absence of mortality


Posted by Vigilante on May 01 2001,22:41
Err... too late, file's already toast.

Anyway, shit very very rarely crashes, even sonique and half life. it's just a waste of time when they do. if it happens more often, I'll try all that wackiness.


Powered by Ikonboard 3.1.4 © 2006 Ikonboard