Blue Screen

First time ever since getting a PC in 2003. Don't understand it although I googled quite a bit about it. I was just clicking on a bookmark link and all of a sudden the screen went blue and I did see something running/counting, whatever. In panic I booted down the computer without reading whatever info was given. :-o When I booted it up it worked fine, *knocking on wood* This PC is almost 7 years old.

In Event Viewer I got this info:

Event ID 1001
Save Dump, Source: Save Dump The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was:
0x0000008e (0xc0000005,0xbf81254c,0xadged33c, 0x00000000). A dump was saved in C:\WINDOWS\MEMORY.DMP

I found that memory.dmp using Search Everything and it's 101 MB in size :eek There is no mini dump.

My questions are:

What is it, well yeah, a memory dump I guess but don't understand it.
Did it do any harm? Was something affected, if yes what?
If something needs to be fixed, how?
Possible to get this dump again in the future?

(Is that blue screen called a BSOD?) :-o

TIA

 

If it just happened once, I wouldn't worry about it. I'm sure no harm came to your computer and nothing was affected. If it keeps happening, then, yes, something needs to be fixed, we can determine what if it keeps happening. To get a mini-dump, just google "XP mini dump" and you'll find articles on how to enable this.

 

'K I changed to create a minidump if same thing will happen in the future. What puzzled me is the fact that Windows created that dump and when I wanted to read that 101 MB dump, it wouldn't let me do so.

Would a minidump be readable? If not, is there a way to make it readable?

An additional question now. I suppose it's okay to delete that 101 MB memory dump?

TIA

PS: I must have been extremely lucky by never having experienced (up till now) a blue screen in almost 8 years of playing around in computing. :-D

 

Yes, you can delete that dump file.
Here's info on how to read a dump file
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263

 

Or you can go to the guide found here:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35246

 

Set the PC to save minidumps, you can then copy them to the Desktop, zip and attach here, I'll take a look through them.