Five Steps to Fix Blue Screen Errors
Blue screen errors are basically stop errors that occur when a critical system error forces your computer to halt and stop functioning. When this error occurs, the system performs a physical dump of all information that is currently in the system memory. Next, it displays a blue screen on which the error message depicting the cause of the error is displayed.
Because the error is displayed on a blue screen, it is commonly referred to as Blue Screen of Death and the error message is referred to as Blue screen error or bsod error.
In this article, we are going to show you five simple steps that you can use to fix bsod errors on your computer.
- Restart your PC: If you one of the lucky ones, it is possible that the Blue screen error occurred due to a temporary condition. In this case, just restarting the computer should take care of the error.
- Uninstall recently installed hardware, software, or device driver: If your error starts appearing soon after you install a new hardware, software, device driver or update to your computer, this new component is quite likely to be the cause of the error. Remove it and see if the error is fixed.
Quite often, when the blue screen error occurs, you may not be able to boot your computer normally. In this case, boot your computer in Safe mode and then uninstall the software or update that generated the errors. Make sure that you use legitimate methods to perform the uninstallation. To see different ways to uninstall a software in Windows, check Repair Windows In Five Easy Steps.
- Undo any major configuration changes: Any incorrect changes made to the system configuration may also result in Blue screen. It is best that you start your PC in Safe mode and then revert these configuration changes.
- Scan your computer for malware infections: Infections from viruses, trojans worms, rootkits, spyware , and adware are also a major cause of several computer errors, including stop errors. This is why, it is best that you use a robust antivirus tool to perform a thorough scan of your system to weed out any infections from it.
We recommend that you run the scan at least twice, to ensure that any infection that goes undetected the first time is detected and removed in the second attempt.
- Check your registry for problems: Not many Windows users have any knowledge about the Windows registry. The reason being that registry works in the background and is not actually meant to come in the public eye. But, a lot can go wrong with it that may generate errors such as the blue screen errors on your computer.
In simple words, registry is a database in which your Windows computer stores configuration information related to almost everything that is installed on it. This is the reason why registry acts as a brain of your computer by providing your computer hardware and software instructions on how to carry out various functions.
Information in the registry is stored in the form of keys and their values. Registry problems basically occur when registry bloats up and becomes unstable due to a large amount of unwanted data stored in it. You can easily deal with these issues by using a reliable tool, such as RegCure to regularly scan and clean registry entries that are not required.
However, if you continue to face the error even after the restart, proceed further to troubleshoot your blue screen error.
At times, you may find it difficult to undo the changes done to the configuration of your computer. In this case, you may use the System Restore tool available in Windows XP and Windows Vista to roll back your system settings to the time when it was free from any issues.
This tool automatically makes snapshots of your system configuration and files on daily basis. These snapshots or system restore points are also taken automatically before any major configuration changes are done to your computer. To perform system restore, you need to select a restore point that was taken before the error occurred.
To start System Restore, in the Start menu, navigate to the System Tools folder and then select the System Restore command.
These are a few ways that can be of real help in resolving a Blue screen error. You may also choose to note down the error message and look for a specific solution to the error on the Internet.
Moreover, it is recommended that you keep a Windows recovery disk handy to ensure that you can easily restore your PC settings to the time when the recovery disk was made. This disk is of great use when your PC won’t boot at all.
However, you must use this method only when no other method works. This is because when you use a recovery disk, your system configuration is restored to the time when the disk was made and you may have to reinstall all applications and service packs installed since then.
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