Blue Screen of Death Causes
What are the common reasons for the blue screen of death? Is it an Operating System problem? Or a hardware issue?
What are the common reasons for the blue screen of death? Is it an Operating System problem? Or a hardware issue?
This error, known as BSoD is displayed by Microsoft Windows when it encounters a critical error on the system, because it is non-recoverable and it causes a crash. A similar term of the blue screen is kernel panic.
The stop errors are hardware or driver related, causing the system to stop responding and shut down with a blue screen in order to prevent critical damage to your hardware. In the later versions of Windows, when this screen appears, the OS is performing a bug check, offering information for diagnostic purposes.
On the new version of Windows 8, Microsoft changed the appearance of the blue screen with a lighter blue and a short message which says that your system encountered a serious problem and it needs to restart.
The causes why BSOD or the Blue Screen of Death happens are both hardware and software issue and the thing that triggers it depends on the situation. The only way you can fix it is you should know what caused it. It doesn’t always appear but when it does, something is wrong in the system.
This is sure hell and scary for beginners since it’s their first time to see it and the information displayed on the screen are very alarming. Let’s make my experiences as examples. I always tweak my computer to modify its appearance and make it a little faster. To change the look of my operating system, I use themes to modify its skin.
And since applying some skins in Microsoft Windows is kind of expensive, I always tweak it to apply free themes. This is needed because you won’t be able to use any customized skin if you will not tweak the system. I use a program to change something in the operating system to be able to apply the new theme and the operating system needs to be restarted for the changes to take effect.
After booting, Microsoft Windows only stayed for a couple of seconds and then suddenly displayed the blue screen or the thing you called BSOD. I wasn’t alarmed when I saw it. I just knew that the system I’m using is not compatible for the tweak because I’ve already made several computers to use different themes just by tweaking.
And this is the only time that this happens. So since I did nothing else besides tweaking the system before the problem happened, I’m sure what caused it. I simply restored the original file and it fixed the problem. Doing something to the system is also a good way to know its limitations and compatibilities as long as you know what you are doing and you are sure you’ll not damage the system.
There are also instances where my computer suddenly turns blue even if I’m not doing anything. Like for example there was an instance where I’m working and the computer suddenly turned blue. I was surprised because I’m busy working and the computer is running very well and then all of a sudden it turned blue.
In this kind of situation don’t panic. The first thing to do is to read what the information says in the blue screen. And since that time the information displayed only indicated a certain driver which I know is associated with the video card, I simply shutdown the computer for a couple of minutes.
After that, the system is running very well again. The Blue Screen of Death sometimes appears because of a conflict in the system. Whenever you are in this situation and you are really clueless on what to do, just shutdown the computer and then think. Try remembering the things you are doing before the blue screen appears.
If you remember you change something in the system before it happened then simply restore it and the system will be back to normal. If you did nothing to the computer then let your computer rest for a couple of minutes and then start it again. And always remember to read the information displayed on the blue screen because this is your clue on how to solve it. If you need to change something or restore a file, always go to Safe Mode.