On this page you will find a few frequently asked computer questions .

FAQ: What is a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)?

A Blue Screen Screen of Death typically occurs on Microsoft's Business Operating Systems: Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP Pro, and Windows 2003. Technically, Windows 95, 98, and Me can get a similar "blue" screen when an error is encountered, but this is not usually referred to as a blue screen of death. The Blue Screen of Death is when the Operating System encounters a fatal error in it's processing. You could classify blue screen causes into three categories: bugs in software, corruption in memory or on the hard drive, or faulty hardware. Due to the last 2 causes, you can see why it is simply not possible to get rid of all blue screens. There are over 100 different types of blue screens. Each one reports a different type of error that helps support personnel decipher what happened. Many times, a blue screen will result from a bug in a driver from a 3rd party vendor. However, sometimes they do occur from bugs in the Operating System. If you get a blue screen, you can search in Newsgroups and on Microsoft's Knowledge Base to see if it is a known issue. Sometimes you can get lucky using the information that is displayed on the blue screen itself at the time of the crash. Beware! Often this information can be incorrect as it may not show what actually caused the problem, or may not provide enough information to determine the cause of the problem. A better method is to first start out by thinking what has changed lately. If you just installed a new driver, then there is a good chance that caused the issue. If you can't find the solution yourself, you can get someone skilled in reading "memory dumps" to tell you what happened. A memory dump is just as it sounds - it is a file that contains all the memory at the time of the error. People skilled in dump reading use a program called a debugger to read the contents of the dump file and determine what caused the crash. If this option is available to you, it is the best and most accurate. You may try enlisting help from someone in a Newsgroup, or give us a call. We have people capable of reading memory dumps.