Kill the Blue Screen of Death

If you've been running windows for awhile, chances are you've seen a Blue Screen of Death. This is among the scariest of problems with a computer, just because of the pure surprise factor, because you don't usually see it coming. It's just BAM and your screens a bright Blue color and is usually accompanied by some scary beeping noise. I've jumped through the roof because of it one or a few times. Here I'll take you through what exactly a Blue Screen of Death is and what usually causes it.

The Blue Screen of Death is basically an error so catastrophic that your computer can't keep running, so it has to shut itself off and restart before it can resume normal function again. It's also called a Stop Error. Basically what causes the Stop Error, or the Blue Screen of Death, is when the software can't properly interact with the hardware of your computer. This happens when the software or the hardware is corrupted in some way, for example bad device drivers or important windows files being deleted or your hardware (motherboard, memory, hard drive etc.) is broken. When you get the Blue screen, about halfway down the page it will say stop; ox and then 8 more numbers. This is the error code, which will tell you the kind of error that occurred. Show this code to someone who knows their stuff and they can tell you what the problem is. Now Vista unfortunately only shows this screen for about a quarter second and then automatically turns off, so it's hard to get the Error code, but there apparently is an option somewhere in the control panel that will make that not so. I have yet to find it, but I'll update when I do. While that is a little bit annoying, Vista comes with some new stuff that is actually really neat and will help you a lot with these problems. The first is the Memory Diagnostic which is located in the Administrative Tools section of the Control Panel. This will test your memory to make sure it isn't faulty. (Bad memory is a big cause of a Blue Screen of Death) So if you get one, run this tool and you can right away rule out or confirm your memory as the cause! Convenient, no? Another Great Tool I just ran into is the Reliability and Performance Monitor, which is also found under Administrative Tools in the control panel. This neat little tool keeps a log of your computers performance and how it's running, and keeps records of crashes and the like that occurred in the past. Here's my laptops report for early March:

See all those ugly red X's? My motherboard was actually faulty for that bit, so I got it replaced and now it's running good as new! I might actually write an article just about these neat apps that come with Vista. Everyone seems to be all against it these days, but now that they've fixed it up, it works great for me and I like it so much better then XP. Just because Vista was Problematic in the beginning (And it was!) doesn't mean that Microsoft hasn't learned a little bit. And now Vista is all the better for it.

Well that's my spiel on the Blue Screen of Death. Hopefully this has helped you to understand a little bit about what it actually is and what to do about it. Thanks for reading!

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