savedump.exe and pagefile
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Today I was curious about what savedump.exe does. And after some research I found the following:
On Windows 2000 it is a part of the logon process where it copies the crash dump section from the pagefile to a memory dump and also creates a mini dump file.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257299
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/262077
On Windows 2003 and XP savedump.exe doesn’t touch the pagefile. Session manager smss.exe truncates the pagefile and renames it to dumpxxx.dmp file (copying it to the boot volume if necessary). Then savedump.exe copies that file to the correct location and then creates the mini dump file.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886429
Also I couldn’t find savedump.exe on Vista. It looks like it was finally removed.
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July 18th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
In addition to the standard W2K3 style saving of dumps, Vista and Server 2008 have a new DedicatedDumpFile option (configuarable in the registry) that allows a dump to be staged (ie temporarily saved during the crashing) to a dedicated dump file rather than the pagefile. Useful for biot from SAN scenerios where you want to use a local drive for handling the dump
July 18th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Interesting stuff. I put here the article about this where registry entries are specified at the end:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950858