Saw this and following on from my TA Tips for Newbies thought this was useful

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/bb986609.aspx

On Demand Live Meeting: TechNet Presents: MCS Talks Infrastructure Architecture– session 1, Infrastructure Architecture Overview
This first session will introduce the “MCS Talks Infrastructure Architecture” webcast series, giving an overview of the series and what’s to come. We will then move in to an overview session looking at the general architecture strategies of specific technology areas, such as adopting Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 and show some real benefits from their deployment. Datacentre consolidation is also a serious consideration for many so we’ll be looking how Microsoft Hyper-V and the System Center suite of tools can be used to accelerate this and ensure long term reliability from this approach. Finally we’ll cover some of the other virtualization strategies we’re seeing, such as when and why we would look to virtualize particular workloads, how virtualization can support branch office models and remote working and finally Microsoft overall virtualization storey, including Presentation and Application virtualization.

ON DEMAND TechNet Presents: MCS Talks Infrastructure Architecture – session 2, Core Infrastructure
This session will look at core infrastructure services, focussing on the decisions commonly faced by enterprises when deploying Active Directory. We’ll look at how the improvements in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 can help rationalize the Active Directory infrastructure while still supporting complex and disperse environments. We will cover the design process for an Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) upgrade and consolidation project, considering the key decisions which must be made and how these will benefit an enterprise environment. New features such as read-only domain controllers (RODCs) and fine-grained password policies will be covered as well as more general design principles and considerations for remote workers. Finally we will cover how it is possible to take advantage of new virtualization technologies in supporting Active Directory. TO ACCESS THE MEETING ON DEMAND PLEASE CLICK REGISTER AND FOLLOW THE STEPS

I’ll just save this ….. (Pause click save draft )

Well this takes me neatly onto two things

Firstly

I was lucky enough to see this presentation at Tech-Ed 2008 EMEA from the IT God that is Mark Russinovich called a “case of the unexplained” 

He reminds me of Marvin the Paranoid Android  from hitch hikers guide, well at least the brain the size of a planet bit anyway… 

Secondly

I wanted to have a chance to put what I had learned into practice and also get the opportunity to blog about it, hey every cloud has a silver lining. So..  

I had already downloaded WinDbg so all I needed to do was update the symbols path …

SRV*c:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

and away we go..

So I locate the Crash Dump, I’m running Vista so its c:\windows\MEMORY.DMP

Open CrashDbg and (Ctrl+D) Open Crash Dump

There are two things I can do as a novice

I can click the nice little hyper link to see if this reveals anything

So I click !analyze –v and first of all see this

“KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (8e)
This is a very common bugcheck.  Usually the exception address pinpoints the driver/function that caused the problem.  Always note this address as well as the link date of the driver/image that contains this address.
Some common problems are exception code 0×80000003.  This means a hard coded breakpoint or assertion was hit, but this system was booted /NODEBUG.  This is not supposed to happen as developers should never have hardcoded breakpoints in retail code, but …
If this happens, make sure a debugger gets connected, and the
system is booted /DEBUG.  This will let us see why this breakpoint is
happening.

Arguments:
Arg1: c0000005, The exception code that was not handled
Arg2: 97b13949, The address that the exception occurred at
Arg3: beb70034, Trap Frame
Arg4: 00000000”

I look further down the irony is killing me …..

So I mentioned I was new to blogging, I have just set up an account today (well technically yesterday now) and installed Windows Live Writer Beta to write my blog entries

WinDbg
This is a great tool and while I admit I am a complete novice at this I’m sure you’ll agree that this is really useful information it even tells me what to do next …

Followup: MachineOwner

“but …If this happens, make sure a debugger gets connected, and the
system is booted /DEBUG.  This will let us see why this breakpoint is
happening.”

As I am using a Beta version of the software I am going to follow the advice to boot my system /DEBUG, save frequently and if it happens again hopefully submit a useful crash dump to Microsoft!

Happy Hunting

Now the last time it crashed was when I pre-viewed my post ….. “pop”