Blue Screen of Death fixit programs

[petgray]

Good evening

I recently bought a new computer (Windows XP) and I am now getting an
intermittent "Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). So far, so normal. I tried
all the usual fixes (updating drivers, updating programs, updating
Windows, using the Windows automatic error reporting system, running
various hardware and software scans and checks) but nothing worked.
The BSOD was occurring about every half an hour, apparently randomly,
not obviously relating to anything I had done or was doing at the time.
I am not a computer programmer so the inscrutable error messages mean
nothing useful to me.

I fixed it (for the time being) by rolling back the sytem to a restore
point 24 hours before the BSOD started happening. However, because I
never found out what caused it, it is possible, nay likely, that it
will happen again.

If it happens again, what I really need is a utility program which will
monitor the sytem and tell me "this is why it happened and this is what
you need to do" in plain language without any of this "0x00000050"
nonsense. Can anyone recommend a good utility program to do this? A
Google search for "Blue Screen of Death" produces 9 sponsored links to
utility programs which claim to do this, but I have no way of choosing
between them, so should I just choose the first one on the list which
is PC OnPoint at www.pconpoint.com?

And then I will send the bill to Bill Gates. Ha.

Any advice appreciated. Thank you. Peter.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Send the bill to the manufacturer. A BSOD, particularly on a new machine,
can be an indicator of a hardware issue. If it is still under warranty, make
them fix it - there's no point to trying to fix it yourself.

If it's not under warranty, then the details of the BSOD - error codes and
modules involved - as well as a brief description of what you are doing when
it happens can usually help point in the right direction. If not, and a
memory dump is being created, then it can be analyzed for the point of
failure.

Running an additional program to detect what is happening at the point of
system failure is generally unproductive as the program is likely to be
locked out before it can capture the data.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[petgray]

Thanks Rick. I appreciate the advice, and I was aware that hardware as
well as software faults can cause a BSOD. However, your reply
illustrates a problem which end users have in analysing computer
faults: a computer is such a complicated piece of kit that it's too
easy for the suppliers/manufacturers of the different components to
blame each other when something goes wrong.

You think that it might be a hardware fault. That's possible, but in
my view unlikely. The BSOD didn't happen for the first two weeks I
owned the computer, it started happening after I began using the
scanner for the first time (HP Photo 964) and it stopped happening when
I rolled back the system to a time before I used the scanner. (I seem
to remember that this scanner / BSOD problem happened to Bill Gates
himself in public when he was demonstrating the new Windows 98 OS in
1998?). I have also used a hardware diagnostic utility which found no
faults in the computer memory or hard disk. So a software fault would
seem more likely than a hardware fault. Dell (the computer
manufacturer) would probably blame HP. HP would probably blame Windows
XP. All three of them would probably blame me, the user, for doing
something or not doing something that I should / shouldn't have done.
The bottom line is, it would be really helpful if the Windows XP BSOD
error messages were more helpful to a non-technical user, or better
still, if the computer didn't crash at all (as I believe is the case
with Apple Mac and Linux?).

I have, incidentally, used the scanner since the roll-back and not got
a BSOD, so I don't know whether the scanner has anything to do with it.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Bill's incident with the scanner was with Win98.

There is no easy way of analyzing a blue screen error. Passing the buck is
quite common, but the simple fact of the matter is that with an OEM system
the manufacturer is solely responsible for support. Of course, support to
them can simply be to tell their end users to run the recovery software and
start over rather than actually try to figure out what's wrong.

You could check the event viewer for clues as to what happened previously if
you are interested, some vestiges of the errors may be there (but sometimes
not). Incidentally, the biggest cause of bluescreens are device drivers. If
it started after installing some piece of hardware, then the driver involved
is the prime suspect. If it starts to happen again, disable the autorestart
on system failure in the control panel/system/advanced tab/startup and
recovery settings in order to force the blue screen so that it is readable.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org