Brandon from Windows Experience Blog recently had a chance to give one of the components of MDOP - the Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 6.0 - a try:

DaRT is an excellent set of tools for IT Professionals to troubleshoot unresponsive PCs and removing viruses and malware off infected PCs in their environment. DaRT 6.0  also now has the ability for IT Professionals to conduct offline removal of malware and viruses from infected PCs.

The first thing I noticed when I started using DaRT is that it provides two options to the IT Professional: a way to analyze crash files from unresponsive PCs through the Crash Analysis Wizard, and a way to create a startup disc with the necessary tools in fixing an unresponsive PC that is unable to boot into Windows called ERD Commander.

I first took a look at the Crash Analysis Wizard.

The Crash Analysis Wizard allows an IT Professional to take a crash dump file (*.dmp files associated with a system crash) and analyze it and get important bits of information that could help figure out why a PC is crashing. I have an old .dmp file from a crash a long time ago I dug up to run through the Crash Analysis Wizard. The Crash Analysis Wizard requires the Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows as a prerequisite so before proceeding in analyzing my .dmp file, I had to install that first. I was also able to specify any Symbol files I had as well. I had no Symbols to provide so I skipped to choosing the specific .dmp file I wanted to analyze.

Once I choose the .dmp files - I clicked next and the analysis commenced.

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