Tip: Enable minidumps in a Windows guest

You can use virt-win-reg to enable minidumps in Windows guests. Quite easily as it happens.

First prepare a file crashcontrol.reg containing:

; NB: This assumes CurrentControlSet == ControlSet001
; See "CurrentControlSet etc." in virt-win-reg(1)

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CrashControl]
"AutoReboot"=dword:00000000
"CrashDumpEnabled"=dword:00000003
"DumpFile"=str(2):"%SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP"
"LogEvent"=dword:00000001
"MinidumpDir"=str(2):"%SystemRoot%\Minidump"
"MinidumpsCount"=dword:00000032
"Overwrite"=dword:00000001

The key fields are AutoReboot, which you probably want to set to 0 to stop the guest from automatically rebooting when it gets a BSOD, and CrashDumpEnabled for which you can read the docs here.

Then import this into the guest (which must not be running):

$ virt-win-reg --merge GuestName crashcontrol.reg

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