How To Recover From Blue Screen Of Death on Windows

Windows users are familiar with the dreaded “blue screen of death”, a screen displayed by windows which virtually doesn’t provide much useful information. I have recently faced with one. Here are few steps which can help you out of this sticky situation. This is probably not for newbies.

First of all it never hurts to have backups (easy to say).

Most of the time you get BSD because you have just installed a new software / driver. It could be also be because you have changed the hardware like Motherboard and the existing software doesn’t work well with your new hardware. In my case I changed my Vega Motherboard (Main Board) with Asrock.

Steps:

Your first line of defense is to boot with last known good configuration (normally F7 while booting gets you to this screen where you can choose). Many times that is all you need.

If that does not work then you need to identify the offending software. First try to reboot in safe mode with networking enabled. Networking is good because you can look up some details on internet. If that works then skip the next step and continue reading.

If safe boot with networking doesn’t work then you need to reboot in safe mode. Then open the event viewer (normally under Administrative tools) and look for any events with error (red symbol). Often you will get more than one of such alerts. That usually means dependent services failed when one (or more) core services failed. Go through all the errors and try to find the first service which failed. Normally you will find either a service which you can associate with a software or at least a file (like a sys file) which is associated with the failure. Search in internet for the file to find which software it is associated with.

Uninstall the offending software.

Reboot and pray (optional).

Note:

If the BSD is occassional then your memory may also be the culprit. Try changing the memory to see if it resolves the problem.

Footnote: One thing I have learned for certain about Windows Operating system is that nothing is certain. It ain’t Solaris.

Please don’t use the comments section for support. I am pretty sure I cannot provide support to your very individual needs. Use the above as a guideline. If that doesn’t work then you can always seek the help of a professional.