BSOD - Blue Screen Of Death

BSOD - Blue Screen Of Death or  Stop on Error Screen ...

Or how to decode infamous Blue Screen of Death or Stop on Error Screen for Microsoft Products

The  phone is ringing, you look at the clock it is o'dark thirty. When you answer the phone the Data Center Control guy is on the phone saying that the server EEPAO-12098Z1 has failed. You get dressed and head to the Data Center. When you get there you see on the monitor:

Awwwww CR**! Now what?

Well you have a couple of choices, go home and go back to bed (you probably won't have a pay check any more either)

Blue Screen of Death Troubleshooting techniques:

Or you can troubleshoot this error. Your best bet for finding out what this error is will be MS Tech Net at http://technet.microsoft.com/ en-us/default.aspx

You can put in the 'Driver_IRQ....' or the 'Stop 0x00....' in the search box and normally find results (at the time of this writing it was over 800). You may want to refine your search to a smaller area and use the last line to do the search - '**Clsabrf.SYS - ...'.

Now if you have the fix all you have to do is apply it either through the 'Safe Mode' the 'Emergency Console' or a Boot OS.

Once you fix the problem the next thing is to test the system, if it starts normally all is good.

But what if the fix caused a different error and BSOD (Blue Screen of Death)? What if the search doesn't turn up any fixes? What then?

Your next choice is to make the 'Memory Dump' file big enough to capture the error, normally a 64K dump file will be big enough to capture a start up error but not if the system is up and running when it crashes.

Or if you have the dump file turned off for performance purposes you will need to get in to the system and turn it on, you can do this either by the 'Safe Mode' or with a boot OS such as BartPE or

(If you happen to have a copy) ERD Commander.

The 5 Steps to high quality and cheap DIY Computer Repairs Get It Today...

Start it up and let it crash - yes you need to get the reporting program to write the dump file. Once it has crashed restart the system with your trusty emergency boot OS, copy the file off the effected system.

Now you need to have either MS Support that can debug the dump file or do it yourself. If you are sending it off to MS Support then all you need to do now is contact them, get the support ticket number and where to send the file then wait for the answer from MS.

If you are doing the BSOD - Blue Screen of Death debugging yourself you need to have this program installed on your computer:

https://www.microsoft.com/ whdc/devtools/debugging/installx86.mspx, [content removed by microsoft.com]

See this page for the setup instructions:

https://www.microsoft.com/ whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx Microsoft has blocked this page, you can do a search for the error code instaead.

Now you are ready to delve deeper in to your problem.

See this page technet.com blogs for very descriptive instructions on how to find the error.

Once you figure out what the problem is you can fix it.

I know that some of these procedures are 'obscure' and this is a lot of Geek but there isn't anyway around it, if you feel this is beyond your expertise then you will either have to contact MS for support or hire an expert such as a freelance MCSE.

Oh! BTW - I did the 0'dark thirty routine for nine years... Folgers loves me!

P.S.

Don't have an Emergency Repair Disk (ERD) for Vista, Windows 7 or 8? You can make your own custom ERD, here is a tutorial I wrote to help you...