How to collect a crash dump on Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2

In the event that a component fails you may need to collect a crash dump to analyze the source of the failure.  In Windows 2008 Dr. Watson was replaced with Problem Reports and Solutions.  When an application fails in Windows 2008, the crash details are handled by Problem Reports and Solutions.

1. Click Start, then in the search area type "Problem Reports and Solutions"
2. In Problem Reports and Solutions, click View Problem History
3. Under "Problems Windows has identified", find the failure you wish to diagnose and double click
4. In the resulting window, look for "Files that help describe the problem"
5. If found, click on "View a temporary copy of these files" to launch an explorer window with those files
6. Copy the files to another location, zip them up and send them to Technical Support

1. Launch Regedit
2. Browse to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Error Reporting
3. Create a new key called LocalDumps
4. In the LocalDumps key, create a new REG_EXPAND_SZ called DumpFolder and set the value to an existing path on the system where you want to write the crash dump files
5. Create a new REG_DWORD called DumpCount and give it a decimal value of 10
6. Create a new REG_DWORD called DumpType and give it a decimal value of 2

These steps will have the system store full dumps in the path you specified.  For more information on these registry settings, see this Microsoft MSDN article : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb787181(VS.85).aspx