Memory Dump May Be Missing or Corrupted on Dynamic Mirrored Drive

When a server stops responding (hangs) at a blue screen, the dump file may be missing or corrupted after you restart the server. Running Dumpchk.exe against the dump file may return the following message:

This behavior can occur if the server is running on a dynamic mirrored volume. The dump file is saved correctly to the primary drive, but when you restart the server the file becomes corrupted.

To work around this problem, disconnect the slave drive before restarting the server. You can then capture the dump file. If you have already started the server, the file is already corrupted. To prevent the server from restarting automatically:

1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click System.
3. On the Advanced tab, click Startup and Recovery.
4. Click to clear the Automatically Reboot check box, and then click OK.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

This behavior does not occur with legacy mirrored volumes, only with dynamic mirrored volumes.