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How
to avoid the Blue Screen of Death - BSOD
Have you seen the Blue Screen of Death lately? If you
have Microsoft Windows, you will no doubt have encountered the following
messages at some point: "A fatal exception OE has occurred. The current
application will be terminated." Or "Your system has become unstable.
You may press any key and wait, or press Ctrl*Alt*Del again to restart
your computer. You will lose any unsaved information." These messages
occur against a blue background; hence the name.
These are technically known as stop errors, and have been occurring
since Windows came out. However, with the ever- increasing improvement
of Windows platforms, these errors have become less frequent. When they
do occur, however, there is nothing you can do but reboot - and engage
in a little investigative work to ensure they don't reoccur.
If rebooting doesn't work, call your computer technician. While you're
waiting for him or her to show up, copy the error message at the top of
the screen. It is usually a group of numbers followed by four additional
numbers in parentheses. (Your computer technician will find these
handy.)
These may look like gibberish, but it tells you more or less what
happened. For example, **STOP 0x0000007F (0x000000XX, 0x00000000,
0x00000000, 0x00000000) UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP means that you
either had a hardware problem or that the system was unable to handle
all the programs you had open.
Further down, there is another group of numbers that also looks like
gibberish. These, too, should be copied, as they detail the drivers that
are installed and running. Oftentimes, drivers are the reason for
crashes.
If you have access to another computer, you may want to look up
Microsoft Knowledge Base on the web. When you access the site, enter
your complete error message. You should be able to ascertain what
happened.
If you keep having these sorts of crashes with the exact same sort of
error messages, you will want to tell that to your technician, as it
most likely means you have a bad memory module.
What Caused It?
In addition to having too many programs running at the same time, the
following scenario might have been the culprit: while one program was
working in a certain portion of your computer's RAM memory, another
program may have attempted to place its memory in the same address
space, with "fatal" consequences.
A great many of these stop errors are caused by troublesome drivers or
hardware problems. So you need to ask yourself what, if anything, you
did most recently regarding hardware. Start with the most obvious:
Have I kicked the tower by mistake and unseated a card from its socket?
If not, go on to:
Have I installed any new devices recently?
Did I download and install any new service packs or other applications
within the last couple of days?
Did I make any changes in the configuration of the Operating System,
lately? What about to my BIOS settings?
Reboot Automatically
If your system isn't set to reboot automatically after a stop error like
the Blue Screen of Death, you might want to set that up. To do that,
select Control Panel » System » Advanced » Startup and Recovery »
Settings. You'll see the Startup and Recovery screen, where you can
configure boot options. Make sure that the option "Automatically
restart" is checked.
Read Your System Log
If you've been able to restart your computer and want to track down what
caused the problem, check your system event viewer log. To do this, go
to Control Panel » Administration tools » Event Viewer. According to
what you find there, you will do one of the following:
-
Uninstall the last device you installed.
-
Roll
back a device driver you updated.
-
Uninstall the last service pack you installed.
-
Use
System Restore to configure your system back to the last known
"good' time. (You'll find this by going to: Start » All programs »
Accessories » System tools.)
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Reconfigure your BIOS settings to a time before the BSOD, if this
applies to you.
How Can I Prevent It?
In addition to not running too many programs at one time, and avoiding
the devices that may have caused your BSOD, you can go to msconfig and
unload a lot of the programs that start up, every time you reboot. For
example, you don't need QuickTime or RealPlayer to load automatically
each time.
To do this, go to: Start » Run (and type in) msconfig » Startup. In
addition to helping you avoid stop errors, you'll find that clearing out
programs that you don't need will speed up your computer's performance.
Support >
How to avoid the Blue
Screen of Death - BSOD
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