Whenever W7 crashes, a blue screen appears very briefly before system re-boots. How do I suspend it so I can at least have time to read and write the error message?

Hi Rogch Open Control Panel and select All Control Panel Items. Scroll down and select System / Advanced System Settings. In the Startup and Recovery section, select the Settings Button. In the System Failure section, remove the check mark from the Automatically Restart option. Click Apply/OK. The next time you receive a Blue Screen error, it will stay visible until you manually restart the computer.Just for reference, here is a link to a typical blue screen error message that has all of the important information outlined in red boxes. The blue screen you see may look slightly different.Blue Screen ErrorHope this helps. Thank You for testing Windows 7 Beta Ronnie Vernon MVP

Alternatively, you can search your hard drive for files ending in .dmp (these are memory dump files)Once you locate them, use this link to perform an analysis: How to read the small memory dump files that Windows creates for debuggingCopy/paste the results of the analysis here and we'll see what we can do with it.- John

Hi Ronnie and John,Apparently, Dumpchk.exe isn't available in Vista and W7 but it is recommended to install the Windows Debugging Tool which incorporates WinDbg and KD.exe . Then entered:Run, cmd, which brought up DOS command field, which in my case is J:\users\Roger. I tried changing this to J:\program files\debugging tools for windows, but i could not findthe path. So what am I doing wrong?

Don't try using KD to debugas your first try. :) It will be much easier for you to run WINDBG. We might be able to see enough details from the report in the Reliability Monitor though to save you all the trouble. Just click the Start button, then type:reliability monitorIt will bring up the tool, and you will see your crashes in there. Open one up and paste in all the details. If it's not enough info for us, we can walk you through opening the DMP file in the debugger, getting symbols set, etc. Ned Pyle [MSFT] - MS Enterprise Platforms Support - Beta Team

Hi Ned, I have the information but unable to paste into the box, as it isn't active. Tried doing it in the reply area, but the paste key is greyed out.regardsRoger