Blue Screen of Death

[Invader3K]

(I couldn't find the old tech thread, hence this new post).

 

I didn't think this really existed anymore, but apparently it does. We have a Dell Windows 7 laptop, which is about three years old. I've had sudden blue screen crashes happen three times over the past month or so. The laptop completely resets itself during this process.

 

Anyone have ideas on what could be causing it, or what I can do to stop it? I am usually just running a web browser (Chrome), and not doing any heavy multitasking or anything like that at all. I also run virus protection and do malware scans pretty regularly, so I tend to doubt it's something like that.

[Patrick425]

Oh yes, blue screens of death still happen. I was getting them all the time on my 2 year old lap top. I got so frustrated that I backed up everything and just rebuilt my laptop from scratch. However, I ran into problems rebuilding it and realized (with the help of our IT guy that we use at work), that if I removed one of the two 2MB memory cards from my laptop that my rebuild would work and my computer would run smoothly. I have since replaced both 2MB cards with 4MB cards and my laptop is humming along with no problems now.

 

So, I think I could have skipped the rebuild and just replaced the memory and that would have probably solved my blue screen problem.

 

Not sure how much memory you have or if you have two slots for memory, but if so, I would open up the compartment for your memory (usually just involved removing a cover on the bottom of your laptop), and taking out one of the memory cards (start with the top one - if, like me, you have two 2mb cards, you can remove one and the computer should still function fine, just perhaps a little slower.). If that does not work, remove the other card and put the "top" one in it's place and see if that sovles it. If your laptop runs better without "blue screens" when one of the cards is removed, you know that there is an issue with the card that is removed and you just have to replace it. They are relatively cheap.

 

Hope this helps.

[Samurai Bucky]

Every once in a while, there are some events that may show up just before it blue screens. You can check these things out in the Event Viewer.

 

Look in Administrative Tools for something called the Event Viewer. Some of it is pretty technical, but the red X's may be able to give you some insight into what is going on.

[Baldkin]

They still happen, yes, but most PC's are now set to simply reboot instead of halting on the blue screen.

 

If you hit the start button, then in the search, put eventvwr it will bring up event viewer. Then you'll have the different types of errors (Critical, Error, Warning, Information...)

The BSD errors should be under "Critical".

 

Hope this helps!