Greetings from Lincoln

Cookieman

Cookieman

BSOD Kernel Dump Senior Analyst
Joined
Jun 21, 2012
Posts
124
Location
Lincoln (UK)
Hi Guys & Gals

Quite a few familiar faces here I see! I'm a bit of a forum traveller myself too. Some of you may have seen me around the windows 7 & 8 Forums, and others may know me better from the malware forums (TSF/TnT to name but a couple) under my alter ego sjb007.

I've always had a bit of interest in crash dumps and I would love to expand my knowledge so I thought I would register here after seeing one of Corrine tweets promoting you guys.

Regards - Steve
 
Hello Steve! Welcome to Sysnative! I hope you enjoy your time here, and it is one of the best places to learn more about crash dump analysis. Feel free to send John a PM if you want access to our automation forum.

Richard
 
Hi, Steve!

For a moment when I saw the username, I thought Cookiegal was confused. :lolg:

Welcome to Sysnative. Its nice to know that at least one person saw my tweet about Sysnative! (Thank you for also "liking" the Sysnative Facebook page.)
 
Thanks all

One thing that does confuse me is where to start with BSOD analysis. I see many post here with excellent info on things like stacks and other things but a lot of it I do not understand fully. I have read the BSOD Analysis Getting started thread which was posted by Jonathan_King but which direction is the best to take after that? I know that for learning malware removal there are malware removal schools out there, but are there any similar schools for BSOD analysis?
 
Cookieman said:
Thanks all

One thing that does confuse me is where to start with BSOD analysis. I see many post here with excellent info on things like stacks and other things but a lot of it I do not understand fully. I have read the BSOD Analysis Getting started thread which was posted by Jonathan_King but which direction is the best to take after that? I know that for learning malware removal there are malware removal schools out there, but are there any similar schools for BSOD analysis?
Click to expand...

Hello again!

There is no BSOD school like there are malware removal schools. Instead, we post our tutorials (mainly written by Vir Gnarus) publically.

The first place to start is with the BSOD Methods and Tips thread: https://www.sysnative.com/forums/showthread.php/284-BSOD-Method-amp-Tips

This is basically your introductory thread where basic methods, and simple tips are outlines.

After that, you will be in a better place to understand the articles contained here: https://www.sysnative.com/forums/forumdisplay.php/27-BSOD-Kernel-Dump-Analysis-Debugging-Information

Those are simple self contained byte sized articles teaching specific points, usually relating to specific bugcheck codes.

The BSOD Methods and Tips thread is updated regularly. The other articles do not need to be rote learned. Simply come back and check up on how to analyse a 0x101 bugcheck, for example, when you next encounter one.

But I would recommend that you read all initially, starting with the BSOD Methods and Tips thread.

Finally, all of Vir Gnarus's posts will teach you (and me) something new. It is a good idea to read as many of them as you can. John has collected some of the best (and there are some here particularly suited to a beginner fresh from the BSOD Methods and Tips thread) here: https://www.sysnative.com/forums/showthread.php/1766-Most-Notable-BSOD-Kernel-Dump-Analysis-posts

Read all of those. After all that reading, you will be quite a bit more knowledgeable! Good luck, and please feel free to ask any and all questions!

Richard
 
JaidynM said:
There is an excellent tutorial that was made by Mike (writhziden) that is full of tips for beginners. It'' take you through how to analyse not only a dump file but the msinfo file etc.
How I Debug Blue Screen Crashes
Click to expand...

You can look at this both ways. That does give one person's opinion on how to perform a quick flick through the output of analyze -v, yes, and it will often arrive at a solution after this and that has been tried and failed to make an improvement.

However, if you want to become truly great at BSOD analysis, rather than just "yet another" person who can look at the analyze -v output, you need to read Vir Gnarus's posts I linked to above, because that sort of information is simply not available at Seven Forums.

To take a particular example, you can see Vir Gnarus's posts sometimes home in on something which has got to be a failing CPU, for example, whereas people who only read writhziden's tutorials, "basic BSOD analysis" will often try updating this and that driver, get stuck, ask for hardware diagnostics, and only then realise that the CPU is failing.

It really depends on whether "basic BSOD analysis" is enough for you, because yes it usually arrives at the answer eventually, but it isn't something in which I could be proud of my abilities, but that is only my own, personal view.
 
We agree with Richard completely. We came here to learn and have learned more in the brief time here than in the months and years before.

JMH/ZZ
 
I can see that there is more to BSODs than meets the eye. I also know that 9 times out of ten you talk to anyone about BSOD's and they automatically blame the graphics driver when actually there is a lot more to it (as well as barking up the wrong tree!) Some great info to follow up here and thank you to both of you for the pointers that you have given me to get started. I do like the idea of taking it beyond the basics too, but for the minute, little steps first...!

Cheers!
 
niemiro said:
JaidynM said:
There is an excellent tutorial that was made by Mike (writhziden) that is full of tips for beginners. It'' take you through how to analyse not only a dump file but the msinfo file etc.
How I Debug Blue Screen Crashes
Click to expand...

You can look at this both ways. That does give one person's opinion on how to perform a quick flick through the output of analyze -v, yes, and it will often arrive at a solution after this and that has been tried and failed to make an improvement.

However, if you want to become truly great at BSOD analysis, rather than just "yet another" person who can look at the analyze -v output, you need to read Vir Gnarus's posts I linked to above, because that sort of information is simply not available at Seven Forums.

To take a particular example, you can see Vir Gnarus's posts sometimes home in on something which has got to be a failing CPU, for example, whereas people who only read writhziden's tutorials, "basic BSOD analysis" will often try updating this and that driver, get stuck, ask for hardware diagnostics, and only then realise that the CPU is failing.

It really depends on whether "basic BSOD analysis" is enough for you, because yes it usually arrives at the answer eventually, but it isn't something in which I could be proud of my abilities, but that is only my own, personal view.
Click to expand...

That's an excellent point Richard. However, I'm merely pointing out that the aforementioned tutorial is a good place to start. As Steve was asking about a starting point I thought I might direct him to that tutorial.
 
JaidynM said:
niemiro said:
JaidynM said:
There is an excellent tutorial that was made by Mike (writhziden) that is full of tips for beginners. It'' take you through how to analyse not only a dump file but the msinfo file etc.
How I Debug Blue Screen Crashes
Click to expand...

You can look at this both ways. That does give one person's opinion on how to perform a quick flick through the output of analyze -v, yes, and it will often arrive at a solution after this and that has been tried and failed to make an improvement.

However, if you want to become truly great at BSOD analysis, rather than just "yet another" person who can look at the analyze -v output, you need to read Vir Gnarus's posts I linked to above, because that sort of information is simply not available at Seven Forums.

To take a particular example, you can see Vir Gnarus's posts sometimes home in on something which has got to be a failing CPU, for example, whereas people who only read writhziden's tutorials, "basic BSOD analysis" will often try updating this and that driver, get stuck, ask for hardware diagnostics, and only then realise that the CPU is failing.

It really depends on whether "basic BSOD analysis" is enough for you, because yes it usually arrives at the answer eventually, but it isn't something in which I could be proud of my abilities, but that is only my own, personal view.
Click to expand...

That's an excellent point Richard. However, I'm merely pointing out that the aforementioned tutorial is a good place to start. As Steve was asking about a starting point I thought I might direct him to that tutorial.
Click to expand...

That is acutally a very fair point. It is true that that tutorial does give instructions on how to understand most of the other files in the output, something which currently does not exist on this website. Also, it is always better to read as much as possible, and learn from as many people as possible to get a broad understanding. So yes, it actually is quite a good tutorial, especially for a beginner. Thanks for bringing it up :)
 
Cookieman said:
I can see that there is more to BSODs than meets the eye. I also know that 9 times out of ten you talk to anyone about BSOD's and they automatically blame the graphics driver when actually there is a lot more to it (as well as barking up the wrong tree!) Some great info to follow up here and thank you to both of you for the pointers that you have given me to get started. I do like the idea of taking it beyond the basics too, but for the minute, little steps first...!

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I guarantee you that won't happen here at Sysnative !
 
niemiro said:
JaidynM said:
niemiro said:
JaidynM said:
There is an excellent tutorial that was made by Mike (writhziden) that is full of tips for beginners. It'' take you through how to analyse not only a dump file but the msinfo file etc.
How I Debug Blue Screen Crashes
Click to expand...

You can look at this both ways. That does give one person's opinion on how to perform a quick flick through the output of analyze -v, yes, and it will often arrive at a solution after this and that has been tried and failed to make an improvement.

However, if you want to become truly great at BSOD analysis, rather than just "yet another" person who can look at the analyze -v output, you need to read Vir Gnarus's posts I linked to above, because that sort of information is simply not available at Seven Forums.

To take a particular example, you can see Vir Gnarus's posts sometimes home in on something which has got to be a failing CPU, for example, whereas people who only read writhziden's tutorials, "basic BSOD analysis" will often try updating this and that driver, get stuck, ask for hardware diagnostics, and only then realise that the CPU is failing.

It really depends on whether "basic BSOD analysis" is enough for you, because yes it usually arrives at the answer eventually, but it isn't something in which I could be proud of my abilities, but that is only my own, personal view.
Click to expand...

That's an excellent point Richard. However, I'm merely pointing out that the aforementioned tutorial is a good place to start. As Steve was asking about a starting point I thought I might direct him to that tutorial.
Click to expand...

That is acutally a very fair point. It is true that that tutorial does give instructions on how to understand most of the other files in the output, something which currently does not exist on this website. Also, it is always better to read as much as possible, and learn from as many people as possible to get a broad understanding. So yes, it actually is quite a good tutorial, especially for a beginner. Thanks for bringing it up :)
Click to expand...

Thank you for seeing where I'm coming from. Vir Gnarus' posts are excellent for analysts who already have a grip on analysing dump files. For those who do not fully understand the basics or are simply just beginning, writhziden's tutorial is a great place to start.
 
RbowWelcome.gif
Steve
 

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