Attack of the Blue Screen of Death

[JMH]

Brewski13 asked the Desktops forum for the best way to diagnose and repair a recurring Blue Screen of Death.

You're working on an important project, and suddenly your screen is filled with seemingly incoherent white text against a blue background. There's nothing you can do but reboot your PC and hope that everything important was saved to your hard drive.

Microsoft calls these stop errors, but everyone else prefers a more descriptive label: The Blue Screen of Death (BSoD).

They're not as common as they used to be, but BSoDs still happen (I experienced one two days ago as I write this).
If you get one, curse, reboot, and hope for the best. But if you're getting them frequently, you've got a problem that needs fixing.

The trick is to find information about your particular BSoD, and then--since that information usually comes in an obtuse form--search the Internet for more practical advice.

What should you look for when the BSoD is in front of you? You'll find useful data immediately below the first paragraph, and under the "Technical information" label near the bottom of the screen. I've highlighted those areas on the image below.

http://www.itworld.com/windows/286644/attack-blue-screen-death

 

[Laxer]

Here is how the recommend fixing BSODs....

However you get the info, intelligent use of a search engine can probably bring up something useful.

If it doesn't, here are some other tests you might try:

• Check the health of your RAM with Memtest86+.
• Update your drivers with SlimDrivers.
• Diagnose your hard drive with HD Tune.
• My thanks to LiveBrianD for recommending BlueScreenView in the original forum discussion.

Hmmm, google and run basic system diagnostics plus some bloatware? :banghead:

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Next they will be telling me to throw my computer out the window and do some "hard-formatting" with a hammer.

 

[satrow]

He was paid for writing that?! It's syndicated, Google will be full of hits for it soon and normal users will take it as 'fact' - he deserves to have his technology writing ticket removed.