Comments on: Troubleshooting a Blue Screen

By: Tana George

Tana George — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:15:04 +0000

The simplest troubleshooting is to suspect a newly-installed driver/hardware as the culprit. If the BSoD didn’t appear before that, it is almost 100 per cent certain that the newcomer is to blame. The problem is that even after you unistall/remove the new driver/hardware, the problem might persist.
Btw, have you seen this BSoD screensaver: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897558 ? I don’t know if it works with the latest versions of Windows because I also ditched Windows (almost) completely after the Vista failure and don’t have where to try it but it used to be cute back in the day.

By: Perry B.

Perry B. — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 04:52:55 +0000

True, NO operating system is perfect. Even Apple and all Unix-based OSs suffer from crashes (blue screen of death or Kernel Panic). The problem lies after crashes happen. In my opinion, all Microsoft operating systems (yes, even the jurassic Windows 98 and the most modern Windows 7) handles almost all computer crashes with uneasiness – and this based on my own experiences as a student before and as an IT worker now.

Steve Ballmer (the current CEO of Microsoft), said that Windows 8′s hybrid Kernel type will “lessen” or completely minimize all blue screen incidents. I can’t comment on this until I get my hands on Windows 8.

By: Emmanuel Carabott

Emmanuel Carabott — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:24:42 +0000

Hi Helen,
A blue screen of death occurs when an error occurs at kernel level. A computer system has two levels, a kernel level and a user level. When an exception occurs in a program at user level the application might crash but the system remains unaffected. When such an error occurs at kernel level there is no higher level to handle that crash, in fact the system itself will be in a so called bad state and to safeguard everything else the kernel issues the blue screen of death preventing the system from continuing to function, this action is actually intentional. This is not a Microsoft thing. Errors at kernel level can happen on any operating system including Apple’s. Apple do not display a blue screen when this happens, being BSD based in Unix they call it a Kernel Panic. For example OSX will display a multilingual message informing the user they need to restart the system when such an event occurs.

Why System crashes occur more frequently on Windows, if this is the case at all, can be for many reasons. There are some fundamental design differences between Windows and MACs, and another factor might be that on Windows there are more third party drivers and combinations than you would find on MAC. Any driver works at kernel level and this can cause blue screens if the driver crashes due to hardware issues or bad coding in the driver itself.

The bottom line is that if any operating system claims to be crash-free, it is deceiving users. Even kernels and drivers that are coded perfectly with no bugs at all (which do not really exist) can still cause a blue screen/Kernel Panic if the contents of the memory itself gets corrupted due faulty RAM (which develops due to wear and tear) or even due to hardware they’re driving developing faults.

By: Helen Walkers

Helen Walkers — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 02:44:08 +0000

This is the reason why I’m not into Windows-based operating systems. I used to use and love XP but after the vulnerabilities and failures of Windows Vista, I came to “hate” all Microsoft’s OSs. Even with the advent of Windows 7, I’m still not convinced that Microsoft has improved their operating system’s functionalities. There are even reports that the blue screen of death still exist on Windows 7. How come? I thought this OS is so powerful and crash-free???

I’ll wait and see what will Windows 8 do to improve the image of Microsoft. But for now, I’m still for Apple’s OSX Lion.