What Is Blue Screen of Death?
Computer freeze and crash problems are not alien to Windows computers. Windows computers are known to crash and generate errors for many different reasons in several different ways. Not all computer crashes are problematic and you can usually recover from them by closing the application that is not responding or by rebooting your computer.
However, there are some errors that may bring all work to a standstill. These errors are known as the Stop Errors. When a stop error occurs, your Windows screen is replaced by a DOS-like blue screen on which the error message along with an error code is displayed. This blue screen is popularly known among computer professionals as the Blue Screen of Death or BSOD.
The aim of this article is to help you analyze a BSOD error and extract the information that is required to troubleshoot the problem.
How to Understand a Blue Screen Error?
BSOD errors can occur both due to hardware and software problems. However, hardware problems are usually the main culprit.
If you look carefully at the BSOD, you will see that the stop error displayed on it comprises an error description-multiple words in upper cases connected with the help of an underscore, for example, PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA and an eight-digit hexadecimal number error code.
The BSOD page will also provide you with some general troubleshooting steps under the error description. These steps usually ask you to:
- Ensure that any new hardware or software on the system is installed correctly. You may need to check for any updates available for this new product.
- Disable the new hardware or software to see if the error goes away.
- Disable caching or shadowing related BIOS memory options.
The error description is followed by the eight-digit hexadecimal number error code. This error code is usually displayed along with four numbers separated by parentheses to further elaborate on the error.
Examples of BSOD Errors
To help you understand BSOD errors better, given below are a few examples of these errors and their probable causes. You can easily use the error names to search for their specific solution in the Microsoft Knowledgebase.
- STOP: 0x0000000A: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL: This error may occur both due to hardware and software problems. The error occurs when a driver or a kernel mode process attempts to access a memory location to which it does not have permissions to access. You may resolve this issue by troubleshooting your hardware and device drivers.
- STOP: 0x0000001E: KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED: This error may occur due to a hardware problem, related to memory, motherboard, or CPU, problems with the installed antivirus program, or installed third-party device drivers. You can usually resolve this issue by replacing the faulty hardware device or disabling the antivirus software or device driver that is causing the problem.
Troubleshooting BSOD Errors
The following are some of the commons tasks that you can use to fix BSOD errors:
- In case, the BSOD error follows a new driver installation or driver update, you may use the Device Manager utility to uninstall, rollback, or reinstall the driver or its update.
- If you find the stop error occurring soon after you have installed a new software, try to uninstall this software to see if the error goes. You may use a good third-party program uninstaller tool, such as Perfect Uninstaller to ensure complete software removal.
- You must ensure that the RAM or memory of your computer is working fine. In case, you find a faulty memory chip, you must replace it.
- A damaged registry may also cause several different types of stop errors. To prevent errors, in this case, you must regularly clean your registry with the help of a reliable registry cleaner tool, such as RegServe.
- You must also scan your PC for malware infections with the help of reliable antimalware tools, such as Spyware Cease and STOPzilla Antivirus to ensure that no malicious program is behind the stop errors.