Blue Screen of death

[ambientscape]

I have this blue screen thingy quite often. It occurs when I tried to play some video files. Is there something wrong with my software or drivers?

 

[RichPLS]

could be alot of things...What are your system specs and what were you doing right before crash?

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[khha4113]

Open Event Viewer (eventvwr.msc) to see its entry (in either Application or System) . You can also upload it to Microsoft Support Center for them to analyze what went wrong.

 

[palmerg]

The event viewer is a good approach. Also, unless set specifically the blue screen will display for a few seconds and then disappear. I don't recall if it's a windows or BIOS setting but a system can be configured to leave the BSoD message displayed until user action is taken. I will research this a bit then report back with how to do this.

The message that displays shows a STOP message and an associated hex code aslong with the filename for the last module or protion of an application that was active when the crash happened. This isn't always the problem module but many times it is useful information for troubleshooting.

 

[palmerg]

Here is a good article describing what the messages mean and what may be up with your machine.
<A HREF="http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1647&page=1" target="_new">http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1647&page=1</A>

 

[palmerg]

If you want to configure XP to keep the STOP message displayed after a systems crash do the following:
- Start>Control Panel>System>Advanced tab
- Under <font color=blue>Startup and Recovery</font color=blue> click on the Settings button
- Under Systems Failure make sure Automatic Restart is not checked. Good idea to make sure that <font color=blue>Write an Event to the Systems Log</font color=blue> is checked.

 

[mozzartusm]

When I was using any OS prior to XP and ran into blue screens, 8 out of 10 times it was memory issues.

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