Can Anyone Make Sense Out Of The "Blue Screen Of Death"?

As a long-time Windows user I’ve seen a few BSODs in my day. The version of Windows I had the most BSODs with was Windows 3.10. Not 3.11. Not 3.11 WFWG. Just plain ol’ 3.1. I never really had BSOD trouble with Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000 or XP unless I had a hardware failure (usually right before the hard drive was about to go FUBAR on me).

There is actually a Microsoft TechNet article called Demystifying the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ that does truly help in making sense of that blue screen, should you get one.

Some of the BSOD messages I’ve received have been:

INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

This simply means Windows can’t read the hard disk correctly. I’ve encountered this when an older hard drive develops a few bad sectors. It doesn’t mean you have to throw the hard drive out. You can perform a regular (meaning not "quick") format which will mark those bad sectors, making the drive hopefully usable again.

NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM

In my experience this usually happens when your hard disk just has too much stuff on it and the data corrupts easily. For example, if you have a 120GB hard drive and 118GB is in use, you might get an NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM error until you free up some space, DEFRAG it (and run a CCleaner too just for safe measure).

Poorly programmed or too-old driver

In extremely rare instances I’ll download a driver and Windows doesn’t "agree" with it too well usually because it’s too old. For example, if I install a brand new nVidia video card but then use the drivers meant for a GeForce 6 (several generations ago), yeah, you most likely will get a BSOD out of this – and will be listed as such.

Solution: Always use current drivers. Head into "Safe Mode", kill the driver, reboot normally, install the newer version and this fixes driver-specific BSODs 99% of the time.

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The TechNet article has a ton of info on how to read BSODs and understand what one is trying to tell you. So if your Windows installation happens to be "going blue" a lot, that article will certainly help.

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trendless
They’ve been pretty common among the computers I’ve worked on in the past several years. Official updates from Microsoft themselves has been a big cause of that lately, especially with big patches like XP SP3 and Vista SP1. Malicious software can be a primary cause too on the ‘wild wild west’ that is the www these days. On my personal computer, as you say, BSoDs have been few and far between. However, on family, friends’ and clients’ computers I wouldn’t doubt if the numbers showed it accounted for nearly 50% of reported issues.
http://www.shareportland.com/ Share Portland
Really funny to see the blue screen of death again, its been ages since ive seen it!
mrfred_cy
BSOD …. This is a good read ….
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1647&page=4
mrfred_cy
I should have mentioned in my last post, that it’s not long before you may need “Safe Mode”. There is some good reading about that at this URL …
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1643
tom
Hi, I payed for a pc , on ebay 2+ years ago. From day one, i have a blue screen , states bump in fis. memory.
I was told it can be a number of things.
I changed the mother board . changed the power supply. changed the memory sticks . changed the video card.
Payed for a Dr. driver softwear , to up date drivers.
AND I still have a blue screen, ANY IDEAS WHY.
if anyone knows , please send to crazy_fox44@yahoo.com because I am going scrazy lol . Thanks
tom
HI , Tom here again.
I am running WINDOWS XP HOME. can it be the hard drive, or windows itself , sounds like windows ??
ANY HELP !!