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would someone explain in plain english what is a dump file?

Anonymous
2014-07-08T03:07:11+00:00

I have 300 mgb of "dump files" do I need to delete these?  In plain English please, I am not that fluent...I have Windows 7.

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  1. Jay Freedman 207.6K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2014-07-09T00:00:04+00:00

    As Doug said, a dump file is a record of everything that was in the computer's memory when a crash occurred, and it's meant to help diagnose what went wrong. Each file represents a different crash.

    If you are not planning to use the dump files to investigate the cause of the crashes, then they are useless and can be deleted. I would not even bother to back them up.

    Interpreting a dump file is a task for a technician with adequate tools (usually Microsoft Visual Studio and a set of "symbol files" that can identify the memory addresses listed in the dump file). It isn't something that just anyone can do. If you want to hire someone to examine one or a few of the files and try to fix the computer, save only the latest one(s) on a writeable DVD.

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  1. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 322.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2014-07-08T04:22:59+00:00

    See http://whatis.techtarget.com/fileformat/DMP-Dump-file-Screen-or-Memory

    Dump Files used by Windows to dump the memory of a crashed program into a file for later diagnostic analysis.

    What is perhaps more important to you, if programs are still crashing is to determine the cause of the crash and rectify the problem.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-07-08T23:47:18+00:00

    Thank you for not getting impatient. Is there a way to find out what are these files?

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  3. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 322.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2014-07-08T23:12:30+00:00

    If you are confident that all of the files that you want are backed up AND THAT YOU CAN RESTORE THEM FROM THE BACK UP, you should be able to delete them.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-07-08T12:45:10+00:00

    Good Morning,

    NO Sir, this answer did not address my question. My question was/is can they be deleted (I have about 360 Mb of these...take a lot of room on my hard drive) I did have a crash, but as far as I can tell "nothing is missing" and I can access all the program. I have a WD "outside" back up system....anyway, to make it short, can these be deleted? I hope my "stupidity" does not ruin your day!

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