I needed to know what kind of information was stored into the RAM of my server when users were logged in. Accessing the content of the entire memory at a specific time is possible for example when Windows crashes.

So, how to make Windows XP crash ?

I first thought about coding some weird and ugly stuff which would make the system hang out and crash but...it's harder than I thought : )


Eventually, I came upon a Microsoft KB article for activating a feature called 'Crash on Control Scroll'. This feature allows a user to manually crash the system, thus triggering the blue screen of death (also known as BSOD) and memory dump generation.

To enable that feature on a USB keyboard:

• Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)
• Locate the following key if you have a USB keyboard: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\kbdhid\Parameters
• Locate the following key if you have a PS2 keyboard: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
• In the Edit menu, click Add Value and add the following registry entry:
Name: CrashOnCtrlScroll
Data Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1

• Exit the registry editor, then reboot.

After the reboot, you can now manually trigger a crash by pressing the SCROLL keyboard key twice while pressing the right CTRL key.



next challenge: how to make a screenshot of a BSOD ? ;)