Abstract: The operating system or memory management mechanism for a lean client or network computer, or any other data processing system, employs a garbage collection memory management model in which live references to an object are periodically surveyed and disconnected storage is deallocated when no live references to object(s) contained within that storage remain. System dumps taken at the time of a failure or fatal error may include such disconnected data storage which was not garbage-collected prior to the system failure. The presence of such extra data increases the size of the dump, complicates searches through the dump, and potentially results in false search hits if apparently pertinent data is found within disconnected storage. To eliminate the extra data and facilitate debugging, a dump formatter or dump tool automatically performs a post-dump garbage collection, filtering the dump file in a manner similar to garbage collection on the original running system.