How do I ask a good Minecraft Bug/Crash question?

Question

I have seen my/other questions reporting bugs in Minecraft get downvoted and/or closed. what can I do/be aware of in order to prevent more questions being downvoted/closed?

Answer 1

Below is a list of things which if you include in your question should protect you from being down voted/closed (unless it's a duplicate). Users can also just link back to this if a question lacks information so the poster can read.

Note: By community consensus, questions asking for support of Modded Minecraft are now off-topic on Arqade.

1) List your Version

Stating which version you're running is always a good start since it's possible the fix is just to update if you're using a older version.

If you are using an older version be sure to explain why you can't just update your game. If it's because a Mod requires a certain version of minecraft, then note that. Remember all legal copies of minecraft can be updated and no support will be given to illegal copies (Help Center On-Topic 2nd List Final Point).

I point that out because if you're using 1.5, having a bug which was fixed in 1.6 and refuse to update giving no reason why, we can only assume it's because you can't and you're using an illegal copy.

2) List your Error Report

When Minecraft crashes, it generates a full crash dump. You can find full error reports in your game directory, inside the crash-reports folder, sorted by date and time. Don't just post the last few lines from the console, as there is usually not enough information to be found there.

Also, format your error reports. This makes it much easier to read, and saves other users an editing step. Stack Exchange doesn't always format new line/tab spaces that are in the report and some characters in the report changes the text into headings.

You can format it by highlighting it all and pressing the preformatted text button above where you're typing

3) List your Specs

This mainly applies to PC: list the specs of your computer. Specifically:

• Processor (CPU)
• Graphics Card (GPU)
  • If your PC/Laptop has a second, 'low power' graphics card, list both the high and low power card).
• RAM (Usually reported in Gigabytes (GB) or Megabytes (MB)
• Operating System (Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10 or Max OSX Version, or Linux Distribution + version and so on)

Don't list everything outputted by the System Information program since some of it won't affect Minecraft (e.g. CD-ROM)

If you are not on PC, please remember to use the appropriate tag corresponding to your edition of the game (minecraft-console and minecraft-pocket-edition, for example)

4) Explain what you have done

Be sure to explain what it was that you are doing/what was happening before the crash. Also try and do it again. If you can duplicate it, explain the steps so that other users can try and duplicate it on their machines. Just posting an error log and saying "Minecraft won't open!" is not sufficient.

5) Explain what you have tried

Explain what you have tried. If your post only consists of a crash dump, and no evidence of attempted solo fixing, it's not going to get a very good reception here.

Some basic things you can do is

• Creating a new world
• Remove mods
• Backing up your saves in .minecraft/saves and deleting the .minecraft folder and forcing the Launcher to download a fresh copy (create a new world after this before restoring your old worlds)
  ^{Note: If you specified a "Game Directory" in your Minecraft profile, you will find your saves folder there instead.}
• Downloading a fresh copy of the Launcher and repeat the above step
• If you are using the Windows installer, deleting the runtime folder in the installation directory (not .minecraft) and forcing the Launcher to download a fresh copy of the minimal java runtime
• Create a new Profile with the latest version (if you're playing an older version)

This will also help weed out having done something silly that you've done and may even solve your problem.