Can I delete LiveKernelReports Watchdog .dmp?

Kol12 · Mar 9, 2022

I have a Watchdog .dmp of 9.5GB. Can this be deleted?

zbook · Mar 9, 2022

Kol12 · Mar 10, 2022

What creates Watchdog .dmp and why is it so large?

x BlueRobot · Mar 10, 2022

They're kernel process application crashes. There's a good explanation of what they're for here.

Kol12 · Mar 13, 2022

Is the LiveKernalReports folder a new folder name for memory dumps in Windows 11?

zbook · Mar 13, 2022

No.
Mini, memory, livekernel, etc. have their respective files / locations.

Kol12 · Mar 13, 2022

zbook said:
No.
Mini, memory, livekernel, etc. have their respective files / locations.

So what is different about livekernal? Is livekernal new to Windows 11?

zbook · Mar 13, 2022

There are files that do not exist after a clean install and are generated by the Windows operating system.

Windows may or may not have problems and creates reports / new entries in the event viewer.

Livekernelreports, mini, and memory dumps are a few of the many different types of files that are generated by Windows.

These were / are available when using Windows 7, 8, 10, 11, etc.

Kol12 · Mar 13, 2022

What normally causes/creates a livekernalreport dump? System failure? Are livekernal related to the system failure setting in System properties?

x BlueRobot · Mar 16, 2022

No, LiveKernelReports dump files are created by WER for troubleshooting purposes. It's just to provide additional logging for applications if a warning or recoverable error occurs. I would not worry about them.

Here's some additional information from MSDN:

A kernel live dump is effective for a category of problems where something is taking a long time, and yet nothing is technically failing.

zbook said:
These were / are available when using Windows 7, 8, 10, 11, etc.

I don't remember them being mentioned at all on Windows 7 machines? The article which I mentioned states that they were introduced with Windows 8.1?

Nobody · Mar 16, 2022

x BlueRobot said:
I don't remember them being mentioned at all on Windows 7 machines? The article which I mentioned states that they were introduced with Windows 8.1?

I had a lot of them in windows 7. I was suffering from a timeout detection and recovery problem then. Bug check codes were: 0x0116 and 0x117

It is possible that they have changed since then.

x BlueRobot · Mar 16, 2022

Nobody said:
I had a lot of them in windows 7. I was suffering from a timeout detection and recovery problem then. Bug check codes were: 0x0116 and 0x117

Those are BSODs and not related to Live Kernel Reports.

Nobody · Mar 16, 2022

x BlueRobot said:
Those are BSODs and not related to Live Kernel Reports.

They created dump files in C: \ Windows \ LiveKernelReports
And, 0x00000117 is kernel live dump code

x BlueRobot · Mar 17, 2022

Apologises, I can stand corrected!

Stop 0x116 is a BSOD bugcheck only code, whereas, 0x117 appears to be a BSOD bugcheck code and a live kernel report code.

alibi · Jan 5, 2024

Just ran into this issue. In my case, it's a BTHPORT.dmp file in LiveKernelReports. I routinely run short on storage, so the extra 2GB that the file takes up would certainly come in handy. I'd delete it if it didn't require changing permissions which I hate doing, especially in C:\Windows:

Doesn't help that the cleanup tool doesn't touch it either. It's an old dump file from back in October and obviously serves no purpose at this point, so this seems to be a big oversight on Microsoft's end.