Blue screen of death (BSOD)

What is Blue screen of Death (BSOD)?

The Blue screen of death or BSOD is one of the most common errors that users encounter and solving it can be as easy as reinstalling the driver or as expensive as buying new hardware that indicates any software or Hardware changes or faulty hardware.

The BSOD was introduced in Microsoft Windows NT 3.1 and was carried out throughout Windows 7 with much useless information about the user's system with the helpful thing being the ***STOP under the heading Technical Information. refer to the Below Example.

whenever a user is flashed with a BSOD, then the user should first try to restart the computer as the BSOD will remain. the main function of a BSOD is to stop catastrophic damage to the hardware or keep the damage to a minimum. But in most cases, the BSOD appears constantly due to any software or hardware change and can be annoying to the day-to-day user.

The Blue Screen of Death was changed in windows 8 and is carried throughout the next generations of Windows with a user-friendly error message with a sad face and with an error message saying "you ran into a problem and needs to restart. we'll restart for you." though it usually doesn't restart on its own, the user has to do so. refer to the image below.

This blue screen of death removes all the unnecessary information and only includes the information crucial for troubleshooting the problem relating to the BSOD.

What causes BSOD?

One of The main and common causes of a BSOD at the hardware level is the memory stick or RAM in your computer system, it could be faulty due to static or because of wear and tear over the years. The user can diagnose their Memory with Free software called MemTest86. The easiest way to know which component in your system is the cause of the BSOD is to try and unplug a component at a time and see if the system boots fine, and if the system boots fine after unplugging a component from your system, then you should try and replace it with a new one.

At the software level, you can easily blame a Windows update, many Windows updates in the past have caused a BSOD, especially in gaming systems, or malware can be the culprit behind the BSOD. Secondly, a badly installed driver or a driver that has been up updated constantly and has never been installed fresh can be the reason. For Example- I had a GTX 1070, but I never installed a fresh copy of the driver due to overlapping of older drivers, and one day it gave me a BSOD, and then I used Windows safe mode to get into Windows and uninstalled the driver with DDU( DDU is a software used to completely wipe graphic card drivers including registry of the driver from your system) and I downloaded a fresh driver, then my pc never gave a BSOD. it isn't just graphic cards, it can be your sound card or SSD, Or Hard Drive.

How to Fix Blue Screen Of Death?

There are 270 stop codes for windows BSOD but here are some commonly annoying stop codes that are encountered by the users:-

• KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED - An error in the kernel process associated with incompatibility or equipment malfunction.
• NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM - This is a drive error caused during reads or writes, usually due to data integrity on disk or in memory
• DATA_BUS_ERROR - This is the result of errors in RAM. The cause may be incompatible or defective memory sticks.
• IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL - This error may be due to a malfunction of the drivers, system services, or incompatible software
• PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA - This is an error related to the swap file during the operation of file systems or the failure of a service or software.

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1. The BSOD consists of a Stop Code at the end of the message, you should remember that code or write it down, and search for it, once you find relevant information for your stop code, you should start implementing and troubleshooting the problem.

2. Install a new and fresh driver for your device as per instructions given by the manufacturer or take out the memory stick if you have more than one stick of RAM.

3. If you have a system restore( system restore is a Microsoft® Windows® tool designed to protect and repair the computer software. System Restore takes a "snapshot" of some system files and the Windows registry and saves them as Restore Points. When an install failure or data corruption occurs, System Restore can return a system to working condition without you having to reinstall the operating system. It repairs the Windows environment by reverting back to the files and settings that were saved in the restore point). point stored in your system then you can try to restore the system to a former state when the system was working in a stable manner.

4. If you think, it's malware that is affecting your system and you are unable to boot into windows then just press F5 at the boot menu and you will be presented with a flash screen with 9 options, where you can choose between different features that can be enabled with safe mode during troubleshooting

Here you can see three options to choose from if you already have anti-virus software installed on your PC, then you can go for the 4Th option the basic safe mode or if you don't have it installed in your system then, you can go for the 5th option, where you will be able to use the internet and download the anti-virus software.

NOTE:- if you see a blank desktop when you log into windows, don't panic its normal to have a desktop without wallpaper in safe mode.

5. Try to remove any unnecessary data from the main C: drive(where Windows is installed), because if your main drive is full, it results in frequent crashes and BSODs.

6. As a last resort, you can try to reinstall windows with a new copy of Windows 10 or Windows 11, windows can be the problem too in some cases, As the main files of the drive C: might be corrupted due to any uncertain reason.