Recovery Entries for Users

In the System option of Control Panel, there is a Recovery dialog box in which you make settings that control what happens in the event of a system lock-up. This section describes values for the Recovery dialog box, found in the following Registry path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl

AutoReboot REG_DWORD 0 or 1

Specifies whether the system is to automatically reboot upon failure or lock-up.

Default: 1 (enabled) for NTAS, 0 (disabled) for NT Workstation

CrashDumpEnabled REG_DWORD 0 or 1

Specifies whether debugging information is to be written to a log file.

Default: 1 (enabled) for NTAS, 0 (disabled) for NT Workstation

DumpFile REG_EXPAND_SZ Path and file

Specifies the file to which degugging information is to be written.

Default: %SystemRoot%\MEMORY.LOG

LogEvent REG_DWORD 0 or 1

Tells the system to write events to a system log.

Default: 1 (enabled) for NTAS, 0 for NT Workstation

Overwrite REG_DWORD 0 or 1

Specifies whether an existing log file is to be overwritten by the new one.

Default: 1 (enabled) for NTAS, 0 (disabled) for NT Workstation

SendAlert REG_DWORD 0 or 1

Controls whether an administrative alert is sent.

Default: 1 (enabled) for NTAS, 0 (disabled) for NT Workstation

If Overwrite is disabled and the LogEvent is enabled, the system displays a message saying that the log is full. All further log attempts are ignored.

If this is unacceptable, create the CrashOnAuditFail value (REG_DWORD) in the following Registry path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

Set CrashOnAuditFail to 1. Now when a log attempt fails, the system will halt and not reboot.

Note A new feature in Windows NT 3.5 is the TXTSETUP.SIF file. This file controls the text mode portion of Setup, including changes to the Registry when you are upgrading from an earlier version of Windows NT. Because the TXTSETUP.SIF file lists all of the files supplied for a specific platform, you can use it to repair your system if it becomes damaged. For more information, see "About Windows NT Information Files" in Chapter 3, "Customizing Windows NT Setup."