Investigating BSOD's and Stop errors

Hi guys wandering if you could provide me with some troubleshooting steps when dealing with BSOD's

Obviously I take the usual steps and memtest the machine to eliminate ram from the equation secondly I check the event viewer for anything interesting but usually it can be pretty hard trying to find out what the problem is when you are presented with a page of hex lol

Sometimes I have enough time to right down the stop code and then I investigate further via internet,

Anyone other useful tips for dealing with these?

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Pash

ally_uk wrote:

Hi guys wandering if you could provide me with some troubleshooting steps when dealing with BSOD's

Obviously I take the usual steps and memtest the machine to eliminate ram from the equation secondly I check the event viewer for anything interesting but usually it can be pretty hard trying to find out what the problem is when you are presented with a page of hex lol

Sometimes I have enough time to right down the stop code and then I investigate further via internet,

Anyone other useful tips for dealing with these?

sfc /scannow to make sure all critical windows system files are intact. Id also run a dps test on the hard drive to make sure there are no hd faults.

Lee H

Hi

As far as i am aware BSOD requires a complete re-install

Is it possible to fix a BSOD ?? Reason i ask, if it was a one-off then yeah re-install but only reason i would investigate is if it were happening to a lot and would be looking for a possible single cause

Lee

shednik

ally_uk wrote:

Hi guys wandering if you could provide me with some troubleshooting steps when dealing with BSOD's

Obviously I take the usual steps and memtest the machine to eliminate ram from the equation secondly I check the event viewer for anything interesting but usually it can be pretty hard trying to find out what the problem is when you are presented with a page of hex lol

Sometimes I have enough time to right down the stop code and then I investigate further via internet,

Anyone other useful tips for dealing with these?

All depends on the BSOD STOP Error...if it's software I've been able to fix it without having to reinstall....if it's a hardware issue it's possible but may take some time.

I would have to say the best tip is to find out what recently changed on the machine and then go from there...I spent 7 hours one day uninstalling different patches from our update server to fix a machine so it can be tedious but will work eventually.

Schluep

Lee H wrote:

Hi

As far as i am aware BSOD requires a complete re-install

Is it possible to fix a BSOD ?? Reason i ask, if it was a one-off then yeah re-install but only reason i would investigate is if it were happening to a lot and would be looking for a possible single cause

Lee

They can be encountered for a variety of different reasons. A complete re-install may not address the problem at all depending on what it is. For example, your computer could be over-heating or not getting enough power. Faulty memory is a very common cause, as well as bad (or incorrectly installed) hardware drivers. A corrupt registry or .dll file can certainly cause it, and even stopping certain processes with task manager such as winlogon.exe can ultimately lead you here.

The BSOD is essentially the kernal or a driver encounterting an error from which it cannot recover and stopping itself to prevent any hardware damage. On newer Microsoft OSs such as XP/Vista it is frequently disabled and set to automatically restart your computer which hinders your troubleshooting capabilities. One of the first things I would do with a clean install of XP/Vista is to disable this option and make sure it will **** everything to a file. Some operating systems (Windows ME especially) were far more vulnerable to them than Windows XP/Vista are. If you named certain files with too long of a file name or removed a CD while it was being read you could encounter them on ME.

To disable the automatic restart so you have a chance to see what the error message is for further research, simply go to Control Panel, System (for classic view people). Go to the "Advanced" tab and select "Settings" under "Start-up and Recovery." Under system failure put a check mark under "Write an event to the system log" and "Send an administrative altert" if they are not already selected. Most importantly uncheck the "Automatically restart." You can choose whether you want the 64 KB mini-**** or the Complete Memory **** (also **** kernal and RAM).

Now whenever this happens instead of restarting before you can catch the error message it will stay on your screen until you restart it like in the good old days. Try googling it first and you can usually find the answer pretty quickly. If you know you just put new hardware in and it started that is likely the problem, but if you haven't put any new hardware or installed new drivers recently you should be able to figure out what it is with the error information. If not post it here and I'm fairly sure someone could help.

undomiel

Well the first thing to do would be to check up on what the stop error code means. http://www.aumha.org/a/stop.htm is usually a very good site for checking up on these things though also doing a google search will get you some information as well. After that since it sounds like you're able to boot into windows it would be best to check the memory ****. c:\windows\minidump and you'll want to use windbg which you can get here http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx and don't forget to configure it with this line for the symbols file: srv*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

If you're getting a driver error this will help you pinpoint what driver is causing you issues. Another thing you can try is the driver verifier, and here's a page with info on how to use that: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244617

I would recommend verifying unsigned drivers first and if that doesn't catch anything then for verifying all of them. Depending upon the BSOD you can also try booting to the recovery console and running a chkdsk /p and if that finds errors then a chkdsk /r can rescue things. Though you would want to be keeping an eye out for a failing hdd or controller in those cases.

If you're really grasping at straws you can always try doing a repair install of windows. If none of these things work then I would really look into it being a hardware issue before doing a complete reinstall of windows. Most cases of BSODs can avoid a complete reinstall, but in many situations the amount of work involved it would actually be easier just to do the reinstall and restore from your backup.

Oh and I almost forgot the obvious one. System Restore! It is always an option to restore back to before the BSOD occurred.

hypnotoad

I always run a memcheck on systems that are bluescreening and/or boot up in linux livecd and see if i encounter any other crazyness (i.e. kernel panic) to see if the problem can be isolated to software.

Also check the motherboard visually for popped/swelled capacitors.

dps

I recently had a frustrating BSOD error in one of our 2k3 servers. Server intermittently reboots for no particular reason.

I found out, through a lot of troubleshooting, that there's a bad printer driver installed. I traced the bad driver and removed it from the system. Downloaded and installed the updated driver and we've no problems ever since.

Was the computer running smoothly before? Trace all changes you've made and see if it's a newly installed hardware or a bad software-driver that's causing the BSOD. If yes, try removing/uninstalling the new hardware/software then power up.

BSOD's involve a lot of troubleshooting. If you opt for the reinstall route, document every hardware/software you install so you can see what's causing the BSOD.

Schluep

Sometimes they can be very simple things you might not think of either. A business associate of mine kept calling me and mentioning his laptop was getting BSODs. It ended being a case that while running on battery power he had WiFi on, Screen Backlight maxed out, and peripherals plugged into all four USB ports and the battery could not provide sufficient power.