Tag: Death

Blue screen troubleshooting tips for Windows

September 21, 2008 by Jason

Normally, the blue screen of death contains a driver name, and some addresses; if you’re lucky, removing that driver will do the trick. But what if there is no driver name on the BSoD? And what if you don’t have all the skills to play with crashdumps and debuggers?

In this case, Autoruns comes to the rescue. This is a graphical tool that allows you to disable/enable drivers in a very easy way.

The strategy:

1. Boot into safe mode (since the system is crashing when you attempt to boot normally);
2. Start Autoruns, and switch to the Drivers tab;
3. Go through the list, and uncheck the drivers that are suspicious;
4. Close the program, restart and boot normally

The steps above will be repeated until the system is able to boot correctly.

When that happens, remember what were the last changes you applied, and try to enable some drivers back - until you figure out which one of them was causing the issue. Read More»

At the Roots of Windows Blue Screen of Death

July 17, 2008 by Jason

Unfortunately for Microsoft, one of the aspects of its proprietary operating system that has grown to become associated by default with the Windows brand is the Blue Screen of Death. BSOD, for short, is the result of a critical system error that will stop the operating system dead in its tracks and lead to a reboot.

In the NT corner of the universe, blue is by no means a welcomed color, and the BSOD even managed to span a cousin after the launch of Windows Vista. The Black Screen of Death was used to refer to systems thrown into Reduced Functionality Mode, scenarios far less severe than a critical system crash, of course depending on perspective. Read More»