Trouble Shooting the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)

Trouble Shooting the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)

BlueScreenView – This will scan all the minidump files that are created during blue screen of death crashes. It will allow you to view the details of the BSOD and allow you to pinpoint what is causing it. It will display the error code, error address, drivers that are causing it and more.

BIOS Diagnostics – On machine start-up, press the BIOS key to enter these settings and run a diagnostic. On Dell machines, this is F12.

Using Dell Diagnostics via the Dell website – Use the full Diagnostic of Dell tools to find out what piece of hardware might be causing these crashes. It will stress test hardware and highlight error warnings. This can take up to 40 minutes.

Windows Diagnostic Tool – This is designed to assist in troubleshooting issues such as slow performance, memory leaks or crashes.

Other diagnostic tools include:

  • ‘Find and fix bluescreen problems’ – This can find found in the Windows Control Panel
  • Windows Memory Diagnostic – Search this from the start menu.
  • Useful memory diagnostic tool: memtest86 – Useful for checking memory dumps.

Dell Support Assist: This tends to come automatically installed on all new Dell machines. This is a piece of smart software that can help to remove viruses, detecting issues, optimising settings and performing updates. Although helpful, it can be the reason to why the machine bluescreens. See this case study.

Microsoft Safety Scanner – Malware can also cause bluescreen issues. This Microsoft tool is designed to scan your computer for malware and help to remove them.

Microsoft Driver Verifier – Faulty device drivers can also be root cause of these crashes. This tool will run drivers in an isolated memory pool to valid them. This tool consumes a lot of CPU usage and will dramatically reduce the performance of the machine and may cause further crashes.

Lack of disk space – Speaks for itself.

Make sure your drivers are up to date:

  • Performing Windows updates.
  • Installing and searching for updates from Dell Command Update. If Dell Command cannot find any updates, then compare the current BIOS and other drivers’ versions to the latest versions for your device’s module on Dell’s website.

Still bluescreening after attempting solutions from trouble shooting?

  • Wipe/rebuild the machine. Something obviously disagrees with running correctly. Nuke it and rebuild it. Still blue screening? Replace the Secondary Storage device and build the machine.
  • It may be a hardware issue. Replace parts one at a time and follow a process of elimination to figure out what might be causing it.
  • If the machine is still in warranty, contact your provider. If covered by Microsoft/Dell etc – Then do as much troubleshooting as you can. Otherwise when you contact them, they will most likely won’t move forward with it unless they have the information they need.
  • Tried all the above and had the provider take a look at? – Buy a new machine.

Links to Troubleshooting tools:

Microsoft Support Articles:

Blue Screen Error Codes

Download: Blue Screen Trouble Shooting

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