How to Avoid the Blue Screen of Death

I will have to add… Don’t overclock!
If you don’t know what you’re doing, you will get BSODs till the cows come home. You really gotta know the limitation of your hardware and even then it could still be troublesome.

I just have to say that I can’t remember the last time I had a BSOD… some people make it sound like they pop up every second minute…

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The easiest way, but not the cheapest, is to BUY A MAC!!! I have been running my new iMac for two months without any anti-virus software. Defrag??? What is that?

Later, VOMFB (Very Old Mac Fan Boy)

I’ve never seen the blue screen of death. Probably because I use Mac, always have. We have a different screen when the computer freezes, it’s in English, Japanese and I believe there’s Arabic there to.

Aw, again with the Vista hate. Out of three post-RC Vista systems under constant use for the last six months I personally have yet to see a BSOD. I think that Chris’ view has been colored by playing with the RCs or toying with it right at its release. Perhaps Chris has some bad hardware. Who knows.

Either way, people should take the naysayers with a grain of salt. It almost seems fashionable to wave yourhands around and say that it’s an unstable piece of hooey. Just take a second to look back into history and see how many people complained about Win95, Win98, Win2k and WinXP. Look where they are now, complaining about Vista just the same as usual. What else do you notice? A lack of technical people pointing out specific systems at fault - because there really aren’t any. At this point, the major system bottlenecks from the RCs have been fixed since the first round of patches.

To be fair, the indexing service has gotten on my nerves by using IO when I don’t want it to. This is definitely an annoyance, but not world-shatteringly-horrible enough for me to give up on a well rounded and easy to work with OS. Vista’s also got some issues in corporate environments with regards to roaming profiles and the indexing service that need to get taken care of.

As a software developer and an IT administrator who spends his days using Vista for work and play - I’ll step right up and say that it’s just fine the way it is. Like I said before, I use it constantly throughout the day on at least three different systems without any issues. Maybe it’s just that I’m blessed with working with good hardware whereas Chris is not. Who knows.

Closer to topic though; a BSOD signals a major system failure that’s caused by either really bad software or bad hardware. 9 times out of 10 I’ve found BSODs to be directly related to failing hardware. My most common culprit in servicing machines has been hard disk failures. If you can get the disk to boot, you can generally check it’s SMART status with tools like SpeedFan and get an idea of the stability of the disk.

Chris; You might be interested to know that in XP there’s a registry key to allow you to force a BSOD. You can find more info over @ http://psacake.com/web/jr.asp

Ive had vista for about 4 months and never experienced any problems at all had it has been working great

Those are very good tips. I am currently using vista on a laptop and i get blue screen all the times. It isn’t fun. Some Times Blue Screen are cause because windows is Currupted

Vista Hardware Issues:
Microsoft dared to actually update their driver model, the new model leads to less hacks and evasive kernel behaviors. As a result hacky drivers needed to be updated for the OS. This leads to non-technical people like Chris to freak out and say, “But it worked in XP, it must be Microsoft’s fault”
I applaud Microsoft for taking the risk when they could have bowed to marketing pressure to keep the status quo.

Vista Software Issues:
The build in software runs fine, so major issues, all of it work running as a Standard User even in the XP days. Now for third party software, everyone assumed Admin rights, Vista did proper security management and took that away. YOU SHOULD NEVER NEED ADMIN RIGHT TO RUN A THIRD PARTY APP. If the same software that Chris constantly complains about couldn’t even run under the standard user profile in Windows XP, then it was lousy software to begin with.

People like Chris should understand that Microsoft took a risk with Vista to fix the PC ecosystem by forcing third parties to use better practices.

great tips. i personally have never had the blue screen of death, but my friend does alot with his older computer and those tips helped him

Again with the Vista hatred!… Now… I have jumped back and fourth between XP and Vista ever since it came out… I bounced back and fourth even more on my laptop which came with Vista Premium.

I have been on Vista now for a month maybe two… I left XP again… I bounced back and fourth a lot but always missed Vista once it was gone. I can honestly say though that with the automatic updates I have seen a good improvement and think Vista is getting on track.

In my opinion if you’re going to get Windows Vista get it on a computer designed for it. Don’t buy a low-end machine with Vista Basic either.. Another thing to avoid BSOD”s in Windows Vista is research your brand. Like I have a Gateway laptop and am overall happy with it… BUT they loaded so much JUNK and TRIALWARE onto the PC it was bogged down horribly, and would BSOD occasionally. Some brands load up a lot of crappy software, such as Gateway, so if you’re going to buy a computer from someone that does this make sure you know how to do a clean install of Windows and how to reinstall your drivers.

This is not Microsoft’s fault. They did not intend your new computer to come loaded down with **** from the factory. I see way to many company computers like Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq, etc load up so much junk it cripples the system. Also never fall for those anti-virus deals they promote. In my opinion you should use a free anti-virus and/or firewall. Why pay for something that there is an equal or better FREE replacement. ZoneAlarm has a free Firewall still I think, and aVast has a free anti-virus program which I find to work quite nicely.

Like I said I put Vista back on my laptop a month or two ago and have not seen one BSOD. I think the hardware drivers are catching up and Microsoft has patched a lot of the …major… bottlenecks and problems with Vista. It took about a year but I would now feel fine recommending Vista to someone as an Operating system, UNLESS you have old hardware… Vista needs a somewhat modern machine to really shine and if you have an old computer you bought when XP first came out 6 years ago… well just stick with XP.

TheDub

Thats great, i have been trying to downgrade(upgrade) to XP from Vista for a long time. I could’nt before because my computer drivers were only for Vista, so as i was told from the futureshop noob. I just got XP on my comp though, and gaming is alot better, my comp is really fast now also. An upgrade to XP would be an ideal choice.

Of course no OS is prefect, but one would think that an OS maker like Microsoft would be able to produce an OS that hasn’t STILL have so many problems. Its a mature system. Linux doesn’t have these serious problems.

I have never got a bsod on my vista computer at all but the last tiem I got a bluescreen of death was when I was on my old computer which was on a windows 2000 os and when I started it up I got a blue screen of death with only 2 lines of code saying boot acess device denied or something like that I had to do a full restore to get it off

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I havend had any blue screens since the last install of vista, a month and a half ago.
the main reason is i think because i cleaned my hardrive, and i mean also the partition tables.
My instalation before this gived me blue screens al days.
I now just run it fine, whenever there are new drivers,, install them to increase compatibillity and install also the hotfixes!

btw I did have 1 blue screen because i killed the proces CSRSS.exe
so if u havend had any blue screens in ur live? (i cant believe that) u have to kill/end the proces CRSS.exe. Im always in Administrator acount to avoid UAC. ik dont get those warnings and i have it turned on!
so i dont know if u have the permission to end CRSS.exe in a normal user acount mode

Good tips to stay away from the BSOD, I kept on getting it from ManyCam but when I uninstalled the driver it’s stopped.

Thanks Chris

Great tips but uh, the thing is.. the Blue Screen of Death is unavoidable.. I’ve never seen one person go through a PC usage without at least ‘ONE’ BSOD. I myself just got done rebooting due to a BSOD caused by a bad driver ( Tip #2 :O ). But yeah, keep backups of new & old drivers and well, try safe mode…but… if the BSOD attacks, just hold down your power button and reboot into safe mode/another O/S :D

I really hate the blue screen, especially when I’m gaming. Thanks for the few tips on how to avoid it and I think I’m doing pretty good on my own. One thing about the drivers and what not that might have not been mentioned yet is the order in which they are installed. I reformatted windows xp a few times when my drives were dying without me knowing and I noticed that I get the blue screen when I install certain drivers/software before others. I remember getting the blue screen when I installed the nvidia NVMixer audio controls/driver (basically the same thing as normal windows sound controller but a little more enhanced with equalizer, etc) before I installed my GPU drivers and directx 9.0c.

Other incidents I had with the blue screen was when I was playing WoW, don’t really know why. When I played Counter-Strike in full screen and when I alt-tabbed out to my desktop I used to get the blue screen every single time. This is maybe because I had a lot of problems with my new router I bought which made my computer blue screen 5 minutes after booting up for like a week. Those problems are long gone now since I’m yet on another fresh install of winxp and haven’t run into the screen yet :).

Anyways, thought I’d let people know to maybe think about the order they are installing drivers if they are running into the blue screen. Later!

Bryan reminded me of something; depending on how advanced your motherboard is you may be getting BSODs due to overheating issues. Is your system in a little computer cabinet? Do you use it as a drink warmer? You might think about checking your system temps (usually accessible through the BIOS) if you’re running into a lot of BSODs during intense gaming sessions, like Bryan there is. Newer mainboards should power your system down in the event of an overheat - but older mainboards can simply crumble under stress due to overheating without giving a clear definition of why.

Since i got my laptop i have had a few bsod’s but with me what has usually happened is that when the laptop restarts and thats usually it for a while but so far i haven’t had a bsod since the end of the summer holidays so my tip would be try a restarting the computer as that may sort thr problem out.

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XP has got Blue screens and windows media player can also cause a BSOD Blue Screen if the bitrate of the audio file is faster than your processor of ram memory

i <3 that sceensaver :P

i got it 4 times today
and its the first time ever getting them

i wasnt even doing anything
so
something is wrong

this is what happens to me when i get it i run a scan with any type of anti virus system and it scan and randomly after about 20 min it will jsut crash my pc everytimg i run a scan it freezes for a bit then crashes

i am a pro-windows user and i have never gotten the blue screen of death so others reading gthis comment be nice to your computer or else you will get the blue screen of death and you will be in a load of trouble to get out

i have used a mac and i have hated the way they do their comercials,their prices, the interface, and they don’t give the ups and downs of windows and macintosh
so if you are buying editing software buy adobe premiere with the power of windows xp and vista so viva windows

viva open source XD

same

some 1 help i just got it the other week for the first time on my new dell inspiron laptop on vista i only got it a month a go why is this happening some 1 please help

my pc is windows xp i got one this mornnig yet ive had it for 3 years it said bad pool header anyone help my ps fine now cos i can tpe this i just want to konw

and it was the first time i got it

i never get blue screen of death and i never heard of it before i found these videos

BSOD’s caused by past versions of windows with the video card? I have vista and I have the ATI Card and received a BSOD because of it.

I just recently got a BSOD while trying to install monitor software. But it wasn’t JUST a BSOD it was a green, red and yellow screen of death!

i got dis,but everytime i get it i couldn’t read wat was da problem.i think i got it from installling a fan.lol

i got one…twice…but i think it was because it overheated…but then i just let it cool off an then it worked fine again

when will Microsoft finally admit this is a problem! i get the bsod so much and it is really annoying. I’ve put the battery setting to power saver and the blue screen doesn’t appear as much. I have never had this problem until I recently had a new USBs installed.

i have never had that, and i have a xp. so **** you

why **** you?

lol ur lucky then cuz windows xp sux

Today I got my first BSOD on Vista out of nothing.. I rebooted my system 3 times today already and still get BSOD starting Windows, I can enter in safe mode, once I install the graphic driver and restart my computer BSOD again, the problem is that I have always used the same driver from HP site and it shouldn’t give trouble, right now I can’t use my computer because of it. Some help..?

heres a idea , pull ur cpu away from wall , its over heating maybe?

quicktime player can **** your **** up

nah i aheva xp and it is brilliant whereas the vista(i don’t have one) they suck

when i used 98 with a half broken motherboard…… so much BSoD about random things going to the wrong place and stuff and couldn’t read instructions blah blah blah

do you really have xp?

i have a ****** pc with 512 mb ram and 6 viruses and it never got a bsod whats going on?

i’ve experienced a blue screen of death when our pc is just windows 98 but in xp nope i’ve never experinced a bsod in xp but i’ve seen one in computer shop.

i have tried that one in my xp…almost everyday it happens in my computer…then just now….it happend then after that all my files was washed up….!!!!!!!!!…blue screen of death is my no. 1 enemy in the computer

Sometimes a BSOD can happen every now on then on your computer, but after restarting it everything’s back to normal, provided the blue screen doesn’t say FATAL SYSTEM ERROR.

i’ve never had a bsod..

I have a question, but I would like to ellaborate on something, When I bought this cheap webcam @ walmart, and installed it, thats when i started getting bsods…..well, Im not using the webcam anymore, can that sorta prevent the bsod?? anyone who has an answer please tell me ….cause I never had any bsods befor I bought the webcam.

If you learn how to do Crash Dump Analysis using the Windows Debugger Tools, it can pinpoint EXACTLY what program is causing the issue.

it happened once in our laptop, i never knew how terrible it is

I had the BSOD many times… 2 of those many said: Fatal System Error.

Soooo good i can use system restore. :)

it happened to me once and we repaired it, then after 2 months it happened again and i stopped it u know how when the blue screen appears click and hold the power button till the computer shuts down after its done turning off wait 5 seconds
and turn the computer on again. I SWERE IT WORKS

are you supposed to unzip it?