Cause of Windows 7 “The system could not sucessfully load the crash dump driver”?

Question

I have a couple laptops that will log this error several times after every resume from sleep/hibernate or bootup.

Log Name:      System
Source:        volmgr
Date:          1/20/2010 8:08:58 AM
Event ID:      45
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Description:
The system could not sucessfully load the crash dump driver.

I've poked around on Google and nothing jumped out at me as the cause. I also looked on eventid.net and the only entry there is for a different configuration than mine.

How can I try to diagnose this problem?

Answer 1

(After further input, I had to rewrite my answer.)

See if this Microsoft Support article applies to your case:
Windows Server 2008-based or Windows Vista Service Pack 1-based systems do not generate a dump file if the system partition is a mirrored volume

The article says:

This problem occurs because the Crashdmp.sys driver checks whether the volume of the system partition is supported when it is loaded. However, the Crashdmp.sys driver performs an incorrect check when the system partition is a mirrored volume. Therefore, the Crashdmp.sys driver identifies the mirrored volume as an unsupported volume.

A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft. However, this hotfix is intended to correct only the problem that is described in this article. Apply this hotfix only to systems that are experiencing the problem described in this article. This hotfix might receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by this problem, we recommend that you wait for the next software update that contains this hotfix.

This hotfix is available for download from the above article.

The problem with this article is that it talks about disk mirroring. Do you have that?

Please note that Windows Server 2008 is mentioned specifically, which has a common code-base with Windows 7. You may contact Microsoft Support to find if it applies to you. If you decide to apply it, I would suggest backups and create a system restore point before, just in case.