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Where does Windows 8 store minidumps from user-mode crashes?

Windows Vista and Windows 7 is documented to (by default) store a crash dump in:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps

A fact supported by observational evidence:

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But, when an application crashes on Windows 8:

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There are no crash dumps in %LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps; there isn't even a CrashDumps folder:

enter image description here

Which leads to the question:

Where does Windows 8 store minidumps from user-mode crashes?

Note: You can ignore everything after the first line; it's just wasted filler.

enter image description here

Ian Boyd
  • 23,066

4 Answers4

6

I observed the following with Windows 8.1 Professional:

Windows Error Reporting writes to: %ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\WER\

However, per default, it no longer permanently stores the dumps on the local computer.  You need to explicitly enable the storing of the dumps.

Use the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc): Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Error Reporting -> Advanced Error Reporting Settings

  1. Enable the policy Configure Report Archive:

    • Archive behaviour = Store all
    • Max number = 100

  2. You may also want to enable the policy Do not throttle additional data to send and store dumps for consecutive crashes with similar signature.

The dumps are inside the file Report.cab of the crash specific subfolder.

G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica'
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paulgutten
  • 429
4

It seems to be very simple:

On my Windows 8.1 machine there was no %LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps and no dumps were generated. I created the following value in the Registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps]
DumpFolder=REG_EXPAND_SZ:"C:\Dumps"

(the above syntax is not quite for .reg files, but it must be clear what it is)

and next time I had a crash of my program, the dump was generated in C:\Dumps.

I hope this helps.

Sergei
  • 41
2

You can search for .dmp files on your computer. But if you don't find any, then keep on reading.

For Store applications, Windows 8 seems to collect the application crash-dumps on the Microsoft servers, where their life-time is quite unknown (my suspicion : 30 days and I picked this number up from here).

For details, see the article Improving apps with Quality reports.

In a nutshell: You access the Quality reports through your app's "app summary page". This page supplies a Download link for a .cab file containing the process dump (!).

I don't have Windows 8, and my above answer seems like pure craziness on Microsoft's part, but this unbelievable fact is what I read into the documentation. I just hope that I am wrong.

Glorfindel
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harrymc
  • 498,455
0

You can override the location where the files are stored. run regedit.exe and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps, create a REG_EXPAND_SZ with the name of the folder you like to use (like C:\dumps).

magicandre1981
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