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144 Comments
- Po0py, on 05/01/2009, -7/+101I haven't had a Bsod in years.
- One4yu2c, on 05/01/2009, -0/+51"Also known as the BSoD, the Blue Screen of Death appears when Windows crashes or locks up. It’s actually a Windows “stop” screen, and is designed to do two things: tell you the reason for the error, and to calm your nerves, hence the use of the color blue (studies show it has a relaxing effect on people)."
-Paul Lilly - inactive, on 05/01/2009, -0/+44I havent actually seen a BSOD that wasnt caused by NV4_disp.dll for years.
- orbit1979, on 05/01/2009, -1/+44Interesting. I have not seen a BSOD in years. I ran XP for several years and Vista the last 18 months. I think I had the blue screen in XP once or twice in 6 years and never in Vista. Ya, thats right, never in Vista. The only time I'm reminded of it is when mac or linux folks make jokes about it. I say to them its time to upgrade.
- borez, on 05/01/2009, -2/+26Yeah, like that ever worked.
- emotionriot, on 05/01/2009, -5/+26I want to know why it's colored blue.
- bashnu, on 05/01/2009, -6/+23Your lives must feel so meaningless.
- inactive, on 05/01/2009, -2/+18Best way to survive them is to avoid them. Simply use any operating system from Windows XP SP2 on.
- zumpiez, on 05/01/2009, -0/+16And don't buy defective RAM.
- MutexDeadlocked, on 05/01/2009, -0/+15Actually this article has some slight inaccuracies. For instance it attributes some errors to bad ram where it could be a driver issue. For instance, in the case of a "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" error. This error is caused by kernel mode code attempting to access a page in memory marked as not present, which is not paged memory that is simply paged out to swap. In other words a virtual address range where no memory is allocated. This error can easily occur with a buggy/badly written driver. This is true for other errors as well.
- Nickedynick, on 05/01/2009, -1/+16I don't know about anyone else, but I'm almost never calm when I see a BSoD... The exception of course being when someone else has messed up their Windows install.
- monarch00, on 05/01/2009, -0/+13Some days I feel like the Internet needs an IQ requirement.
- bashnu, on 05/01/2009, -1/+13How To Manually Crash Win-xp
http://tweakxp.com/article37502.aspx
"Windows-XP has a "feature" (???) with which it is possible to manually crash a system by
simply holding the right CTRL key and pressing the "Scroll Lock" key twice. This feature can be turned on by the following steps:
1. Start regedit. (If you are unfamiliar with regedit, please refer to this FAQ)
2. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
3. Create a new DWORD value and name it CrashOnCtrlScroll
4. Right-click on this newly created value and click on Modify
5. Enter 1 in the Value data field and click on OK.
6. Close regedit and reboot your system.
7. Now you can blue screen (crash) your system by holding the right CTRL key and pressing "Scroll Lock" twice.
Note:
Your system may reboot or show a blue screen whenever this crash is initiated.
If your system reboots after initiating the crash, and you want to see the blue screen, follow these steps:
1. Go to Control Panel > System
2. Click on the Advanced tab
3. Under Startup and Recovery, click the Settings button.
4. Under System failure, uncheck the option Automatically restart.
Happy crashing.. - FredFredrickson, on 05/01/2009, -0/+12Sure, nobody is really happy when they see the BSOD, but if it were red, you know it would make you even more angry.
- billessig, on 05/01/2009, -0/+10Surprisingly good advice.
- greenmartian, on 05/01/2009, -4/+14me neither. didn't know people still got them.
- SparQy, on 05/01/2009, -1/+10Post it on 1 page, man!
http://www.maximumpc.com/print/6066 - importantname, on 05/01/2009, -1/+9I thought this article would be way longer.
- FredFredrickson, on 05/01/2009, -2/+10The last time I had a BSOD was over a year ago, while playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. That game was prone to make the computer freeze, though. Before that, I hadn't gotten one for another few years, and then it was probably only because I was building / swapping out various computer parts.
It's really a shame that people on the internet perpetuate this myth that Windows computers are constantly getting BSOD's... ever since WinXP, hell even since Win2000 or maybe even WinNT, Windows has been awesome when it comes to stability. My Mac at work gets the "black veil of death" far more often than my Windows machine at home gets BSOD's. - AdmiralAcbar, on 05/01/2009, -1/+9Sometimes happens with bad RAM...
- ionthegeek, on 05/01/2009, -0/+8There are a few cases where this can be useful.
Firstly, you can test that Windows is generating memory dumps when it bluescreens. If your production server is bluescreening and MS asks you for a memory dump, you don't want to trigger the issue and then find out that the memory dump wasn't written to disk correctly.
Secondly, if you're debugging an issue with a driver that doesn't necessarily crash the kernel, forcing a bluescreen will cause all the contents of memory to be dumped out. This allows you to reproduce the issue, then force a bluescreen and send the memory dump to MS for analysis.
When I worked in the MS support chain, we didn't use this functionality very often but it was definitely used. - AdmiralAcbar, on 05/01/2009, -3/+10So it can grey-screen? No thanks...
- NervousEnergy, on 05/01/2009, -1/+8I seem to be plagued by BSODs, on whatever computer I use. I don't even do anything 'geeky' like mess around with the registry. I envy you guys who say that you haven't gotten any in years ;__;
- tyrulz, on 05/01/2009, -3/+10for twice the price your computer is worth
- TWallaceWD, on 05/01/2009, -1/+8I've only seen BSODs in Vista when playing Company of Heroes. I haven't played it since SP1 came out, though, no idea if that fixed the issues. There's definitely way fewer crashes and BSODs in Vista than in previous Windows versions, despite what the Mac ads would have you believe.
- meghalc, on 05/01/2009, -3/+9I havent seen bsod in atleast 5 years. For the people who get regular bsod, you all need to upgrade your hardware or replace the defective parts...Its usually the hardware or unsupported drivers that causes bsod, not the software...
And for the Apple Fanboys: You people don't get bsod is because you all paid $600 premium for the same hardware specs and apple only creates one set of system drivers for the whole product line... - inactive, on 05/01/2009, -0/+6The simplest thing to do is think of any changes you made, and unmake them. Or look for a file name in the BSOD. This could come in handy for the more complicated stuff, but the BSOD as a whole is a much more rare occurrence than it used to be.
- pinguz, on 05/01/2009, -1/+7thanks, that certainly sounds useful...
- Raptor007, on 05/01/2009, -2/+8Wilhoitm, I like Macs, but this comment was really dumb.
- ilikeeggs8877, on 05/01/2009, -0/+5http://www.petri.co.il/change_bsod_color.htm
make it whatever you want - Asten77, on 05/01/2009, -0/+5so, what was the culprit then?
- Philbert, on 05/01/2009, -0/+5@Nickedynick Think you'd be calmer with a red screen?
- TomKarpik, on 05/01/2009, -1/+6Been there, done that.
I cried myself to sleep. - Hellman109, on 05/02/2009, -0/+4The only BSODs I get is when I overclock.
Which is directly my fault - mctom987, on 05/01/2009, -0/+4If you actually read the article, you'd know.
- Raptor007, on 05/01/2009, -1/+5You should not be getting buried, because you're absolutely right. Microsoft turned on the auto-restart option by default for XP and Vista because of their bad BSOD reputation.
A sudden reboot is just a less-informative BSOD. - Raptor007, on 05/01/2009, -2/+6Sometimes people get BSODs without realizing it. Has your computer rebooted for no apparent reason? That's a BSOD with the auto-reboot option (which is enabled by default).
Microsoft set this to default on (I think in XP SP1?) because they didn't like their bad BSOD reputation. Sad, because the BSOD actually provides useful information. - Anukul, on 05/01/2009, -0/+4Very informative !
- Raptor007, on 05/01/2009, -0/+4Sweet... I'm definitely going to make mine more obnoxious. Pink screen of death, perhaps?
- mrBitch, on 05/02/2009, -0/+3True, which is the only reason my Windows partition has not yet been deleted off my hard drive.
Windows is my gaming OS, but OSX (and Linux on my PCs) are what I use for everything else, including development work. - Raptor007, on 05/01/2009, -0/+3One thing they forgot to mention is that IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL can also be caused by memory problems: either faulty memory, or memory that is running at too high of a clock rate and/or timings too fast. It's not always a driver problem.
- Shakuras, on 05/01/2009, -0/+3Now only if there was time to read what it says before it crashes and restarts everything..
- Philbert, on 05/01/2009, -2/+5I must have gotten all of yours.
- theworldisflat, on 05/01/2009, -0/+3Just so everyone knows, the entire bugcheck reference is available in the Windbg help file. It also gives some examples of why the event occurred, and what each parameter means.
- CLShortFuse, on 05/01/2009, -0/+3http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/vistacrash ...
My crashes have always been Nvidia related (NForce or GeForce) - mabsark, on 05/02/2009, -0/+3But the only choice for gaming.
- seltaeb4, on 05/08/2009, -0/+3Oh, Windows still BSODs, all right.
Microsoft just set it to auto-restart so they can claim "Windows doesn't BSOD." - mabsark, on 05/02/2009, -1/+4Hardware Abstraction Layer
- merreborn, on 05/02/2009, -0/+3And whenever I've gotten those, it was an overheating issue.
- mrBitch, on 05/02/2009, -0/+2@ Psygnosis, RE: "... With a mac instead of a blue screen you get ... just a sad mac with little to no description as to what caused the problem."
Wow, the 1980's called and want you to return the "sad mac"...
"... A Sad Mac is an iconic symbol used by older-generation Apple Macintosh computers (hardware using the Old World ROM), starting with the original 128K Macintosh .. " -
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