For those who missed it, this first part for this article can be found here.

So now that we have covered what a BSOD is and what it means, we can delve into what causes it and what can be done about it.

There is a variety of reasons a BSOD occurs. Namely:

• Hardware incompatibility (conflict): This usually follows shortly after adding a new device to your computer, such as a printer. Resources already in use might be demanded by the new device, creating a conflict.
• Software incompatibility/error: Under this we can include drivers, altogether faulty programs that make “illegal” demands from the computer, or perhaps a program not meant for the operating system installed in your computer.
• Hardware failure: This is a broad sub-category. It includes defective RAM, an overheating component, a component that is no longer working, or about to fail (such as a dying power supply). From my experience the ones in this sub-category are perhaps the hardest to narrow down.
• Malicious software (malware): Malicious code injected in your computer might, intentionally or unintentionally, cause a BSOD. An example of creating a BSOD on purpose is, your computer gets infected and you try to start your computer in safe-mode, but as soon as the computer starts in said mode, it crashes due to the malware trying to avoid removal. With the infections running around rampant these days, whenever a computer starts, without any explanation getting BSODs out of the, well, blue, and especially if combined with any of the other signs of an infected computer, one should get the computer thoroughly checked for malware.

So what can be done about it? as you might have guessed, a BSOD needs to be addressed on an individual basis, depending on the content of the diagnostic file created at the time it happened, and that is the first lesson to learn about how to resolve them. Because of the nature of these articles, I won’t include detailed information on how to use a debugger program to load the diagnostic files, much less how to interpret the output of the files. But if you are an intermediate user or above, there are internet forums where you can get help on doing that. Otherwise contact an expert – for example, me 🙂 – and have him/her guide you on how to resolve your computer’s crashes.

My bet is more users have experienced this in a Windows based computer than the number of users that know the above to be its name. Less users than that know what it is and what it means when it happens. Even less users know what causes it. And less than that, what to do about it. So I’m here to help change those numbers.

Abbreviated BSOD, sometimes BSoD, it’s basically a fatal crash of your computer, and by fatal crash I mean an error involving core components of your system that makes it so the computer cannot continue operating, and if it could, damage to your system would possibly ensue. As its name indicates, you see a blue screen in your computer’s monitor, and depending on how it is configured, it might give you some data as to why it happened (although that initial data is not the most useful), and it might save diagnostic information in a specific file for troubleshooting purposes. Depending on how it is set up the computer might restart by itself once the diagnostic file is saved to your disk, or it might stay there until you power cycle the computer (turn it off and then back on). Depending on the cause of the BSOD, power cycling the computer might clear up the error that caused the crash (until the conditions are replicated) or it might go into a cycle where the computer is not even able to boot up without going into a BSOD, thus creating a vicious circle.

So what is it and what it means we have now covered. Next, what causes it and what you can do about it.

Stay tuned for part 2 next week. Same time, same channel!