If you have ever experienced one of these you know how scary it can be. Immediately you think you have lost everything. After crying uncontrollably for about 10 minutes, you finally calm down and decide you have to do something about this. Ok, what is the first thing the I.T. guy at work always tells you to do when you have a problem with your computer? Reboot. And in this case, cross your fingers. Please load, please load, please load... BSOD! Again... @%$#
Now it's time to get serious and do some real troubleshooting. Before doing any research on the issue, you should consider if anything has changed recently on your computer. Did you add new hardware or software? Usually the BSOD is caused by an incompatible driver or a hardware failure. If you have recently installed new hardware, try removing the new hardware from your computer and boot back up. If it's software that you recently installed or a driver, that's a little more tricky since you need your computer running to uninstall the software. The good news is Windows allows you to do this by starting your computer in Safe Mode. To do this, restart your computer and tap the F8 key repeatedly every second or so until you are presented with the Boot Menu. Choose Safe Mode. In Safe Mode your computer will only load the bare minimum drivers that it needs to run. Once it's running, go to the Control Panel, uninstall the new software, and restart.
If you are running Windows 7, you can try to restore to a previous state. Again you will need to boot in Safe Mode. Go to the Control Panel, choose System, Advanced System Settings, System Protection, System Restore. Make sure to choose a restore point from a date and time when the computer was working. This process has worked very well for me in the past.
If you are still reading this you must still be staring at that ugly blue screen. Now it's time to get dirty. If you are lucky the error message on the screen will give you some idea as to why this is happening. Sometimes it will even list a driver that may be the cause of the problem.
Look towards the top of the screen for a message similar to IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM, INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE, etc. Type the error into Google exactly as listed for more information. You should be able to find someone else who had the same error and what they did to resolve the problem.
Luckily Microsoft Windows has gotten better over the years. Windows XP was a pretty solid platform and when they came out with Windows 7 they added the driver compatibility feature that warns you when installing drivers that haven't been tested with that version of Windows.
For more information or if you still need help, visit http://www.auroraitpros.com/ or send us an email at info@AuroraITpros.com. We are professionals when it comes to computer support and repair.
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