Tips To Fix The
Windows Blue Screen
Error
If you’ve ever
experienced the blue
screen error,
affectionately called the
“blue screen of death,”
then you’ll know that it
isn’t the greatest
experience in the world.
I’m going to show you
how you can check for
the most common
issues that cause this
error.
Boot In Safe Mode --
The first thing to do
when you get the blue
screen is to power
down the computer.
When you boot it back
up, press the F8 key
before the Windows
screen appears. This will
boot the computer into
the Advanced Options
screen where you can
choose advanced boot
options. Press the down
arrow until “Safe Mode
with Networking” is
enabled and press enter.
If you believe that
you’re dealing with a
virus that instantly
connects to the
Internet when you boot
your computer, then go
with just “Safe Mode”
instead. Keep a close
eye on the screen after
you press enter. The
screen will scroll through
each driver as it loads
each one individually into
memory. Many times,
you’ll see the screen
pause for a very long
time at one of the .sys
files before the boot
fails and returns an
error. Make note of the
last file it was trying to
load before it failed. Do
a Google search to
determine what driver
is failing and try
reinstalling that driver.If
there are no driver
problems, then
determine whether
there are any hardware
conflicts by going into
the Control Panel,
clicking on System, and
then Device Manager. Go
through each device
category and scan all of
the devices for the
telltale yellow accent
icon that indicates
there’s a device conflict.
If you do see that icon,
open up the driver and
you’ll see a message
box that reveals where
the conflict is taking
place. If you can’t find
any device conflicts,
move on to the next
step – scanning your
entire system.
Run Spyware, Adware,
Virus & Registry Scans
-- While you’re in safe
mode, perform all of
your spyware, adware
and virus scans. This is
the best time to run
these apps because any
viruses that try to
disable them in normal
mode will likely be
disabled at this point.
Also run your virus scan
software. If you don’t
have one, you really
should get one. Another
very useful scan to run
is to check for any odd
Registry entries or
problems. A great open
source app that can
check your registry for
any known problems is
the Little Registry
Cleaner.
Things To Try As A
Last Resort -- Go ahead
and reboot your
computer and press the
F8 key again. This time,
instead of booting into
safe mode, select “Last
Known Good
Configuration“. This will
revert to booting
Windows using the last
configuration where a
successful boot took
place. Many times this
will resolve the issue
without any further
troubleshooting. If that
doesn’t work, reboot
again into F8 mode and
try selecting “Enable
Boot Logging“. This
boots Windows and logs
every little detail of the
boot-up into a file called
“ntbtlog.txt” in the root
directory, usually c:/
Windows.
Open up the text file
and scan through it to
see exactly what’s
loading and when it’s
loading. It’s quite
possible that something
obvious will jump right
out at you. If you
identify anything loading
that you didn’t want to
load, try uninstalling and
see if it fixes the
problem.
Last but not least, you
always have the option
to do a system restore.
Just go to the Control
Panel, System and
Security, Backup and
Restore, and select
Recover System
Settings for your
Computer.
Choose a valid restore
point from the list and
follow the instructions.
Usually doing a system
restore back to a date
where your computer
was running fine will
resolve the blue screen
error. If even a restore
doesn’t seem to resolve
the issue, you could be
looking at a bad hard
disk.
