It’s important to dump crash data files in Windows 7. Yes this is done automatically. However, your hard drive is a limited resource . You need to constantly eliminate programs and remove temporary data to keep free space. However, Windows 7 still fills your hard drive with tons of crash data without providing you with notification. After your computer crashes, Windows 7 keeps all the information for up to the last fifty crashes. More than likely unless you are computer professional, this information may be completely useless to you. This is a large amount of data that eats up your free space. So if you are running low on disk space, you can recover hard disk space by eliminating these files.
You can eliminate Windows 7 Crash data by going into your registry and instructing your computer to not save all the crash data. You can reduce this number to smaller number. Instead of 40 crashes, you can reduce to a much smaller number such as five. Here is how:
- Click Start
- Choose the RUN command
- Then type regedit/ You can also enter regedit into the Windows Search Bar
- Press Enter
- Your registry viewer will load. Browse the registry until you find: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl
- Double Click the MiniDumpsCount
- Change the Value to 5
Once you loaded the registry editor. You will have the ability to search through the registry tree system until you get to CrashControl.
Look in the left plane and you will find the element MinidumpsCount. By double clicking it, You will be ask to edit the DWORD value which indicates how many crash data files are saved
By changing the number to a lowering the number to 5. This will dump crash data after 5 saves. This should give you a significant amount of space that you can use that will speed up your PC. Remember that the more space that you can use for other applications and Virtual RAM. Of course there are more traditional ways to save hard disk space such as deleting programs, clearing your temporary folders, clearing your web cache. Fore more information about increasing your disk space, click here.