What is an Exception Minidump/Report?

Answer 1

From
http://filext.com/info/showthread.php?t=155

After some research, I found that "minidump" is a small file of memory used when your system goes through the error reporting problem. The minidump is kept to send info to Microsoft.

More detail from
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263

Small memory dump files
A small memory dump file records the smallest set of useful information that may help identify why your computer has stopped unexpectedly. This option requires a paging file of at least 2 megabytes (MB) on the boot volume. On computers that are running Microsoft Windows 2000 or later, Windows create a new file every time your computer stops unexpectedly. A history of these files is stored in a folder.

This dump file type includes the following information:
•The Stop message and its parameters and other data
•A list of loaded drivers
•The processor context (PRCB) for the processor that stopped
•The process information and kernel context (EPROCESS) for the process that stopped
•The process information and kernel context (ETHREAD) for the thread that stopped
•The Kernel-mode call stack for the thread that stopped
The small memory dump file can be useful when hard disk space is limited. However, because of the limited information that is included, errors that were not directly caused by the thread that was running at the time of the problem may not be discovered by an analysis of this file.

If a second problem occurs and if Windows creates a second small memory dump file, Windows preserves the previous file. Windows gives each file a distinct, date-encoded file name. For example, Mini022900-01.dmp is the first memory dump file that was generated on February 29, 2000. Windows keeps a list of all the small memory dump files in the %SystemRoot%\Minidump folder.