Windows Error Reporting (WER) creates frequent crash dumps of Power BI Desktop

[andershs]

We are running Power BI Desktop on a Windows Server 2016 Standard.

We have been working two administrator users in Power BI Desktop at the same time.

We have three different .pbix cube files. Each user has his/her own copies of these files they are working on.

Frequently, we have had the issue, that Windows Error Reporting Service (WER) rapidly filled up 

C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\CrashDumps

with very large .dmp files of Power BI Desktop:

Obviously it works to disable the WER-service entirely or possible play around with the DumpCount parameter (thanks Google!).

But we are lacking the basic understanding of why these crash dumps are created by Windows (and why they are that big. The .pbix files with updated data is around 20 MB in size).

We suspect, that it could be something invalid in the data model or a clash somehow in the data connections, but this is basically guesswork from our side.

The tracing and crash dump collection is not enabled in Power BI Dekstop:

Edit: I forgot to mention, that during our work with the .pbix files we are experiencing no visible crashes.

Edit: It seems the dumps are created every time we close down a .pbix file.

I hope you clever people in here are able to guide us in the correct direction! 

Thanks!

BR

[v-yanjiang-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @andershs ,

They are produced when there is an internal problem. A very good reason to NOT install this on your C drive.

Unless you plan on sending them to Microsoft you can just delete them.

Reference: Large DMP files filling up the Controller application server

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ kalyj

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[andershs]

Hi kalyj

Thanks for the answer. Good tip to avoid installing PBI on the C-drive.

Have a nice day.

BR