BSoD help

[memnarch]

I've had a sketchy computer ever since I first bought it and somewhat recently (last 6-8 months or so) it's been having issues with.... something; always been the 124 Blue Screen error. Nothing too troubling; only crashing every couple days or so.

Anyway, the past couple of days, it's crashed at least 6 times a day. I was hoping to get some info on what to do about fixing my problem or the playground's favorite places for asking for computer help on the internet or off of it.

[Haruki-kun]

The infamous BSoD is not actually bad in itself. The BSoD is designed to explain to you what happened that made the system crash.

Try looking up articles on reading the BSoD. (Here's one. (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1647&page=2)

Also, check Microsoft's website to look up the error codes.

Just knowing it crashed doesn't really tell us much that we can use to help you. The system can crash for a very wide variety of reasons.

[memnarch]

Yep. I was wondering specifically where people go to get help for computer issues. I'm trying to look myself, but what I've got to work with is the computer with the problems.

[AlterForm]

Yep. I was wondering specifically where people go to get help for computer issues. I'm trying to look myself, but what I've got to work with is the computer with the problems.

Personally, I note the error code or precise phrasing of the error returned. I then ask the Almighty Google about the origins of the error code or if it has heard the error phrase before. Usually turns a knowledge base page, or a help guide, or, at the very least, a question hidden away in some obscure forum that helps out.

[Rawhide]

You should not be receiving constant blue screens (called a STOP message). One in a blue moon can be ok, things break sometimes, but one every two days should never happen. You should try to track down the cause immediately. It could be a software problem, a driver issue (most likely) or a hardware failure (can be quite serious). The code provided by the error will explain the approximate cause.

The code will be a hexadecimal number followed by a brief explanation in all capitals, such as follows:
0x0000000A: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

For brevity's sake, you can shorten the hexadecimal code to 0x?? (i.e. 0x0A for the example above).


There is only one site you need to know to find more information on just about every STOP error message you can get. Troubleshooting Windows STOP Messages. (http://www.aumha.org/a/stop.htm) Find out what error you are getting then report back here, we can't give any meaningful advice until we know more about the problem.

P.S. Personally, I'm quite fond of 0xDEADDEAD.

[Superglucose]

Give us the error code or there's nothing we can do.

BSoDs are some of the greatest ideas on earth. It's like Microsoft said, "We can't stop computers from crashing, but what we can do is tell the user exactly what went wrong."

You should not receive them frequently. Once in a while your driver will pass a 2 when it should've passed a 1 or a 0 and your computer will suddenly go, "Whoops! That ain't right..." and so some BSoDs are expected. If it's frequent it means there's a problem that needs your attention.

[purple gelatinous cube o' Doom]

If you're issue is on a laptop, the first thing I would suggest doing is reseating the memory. This happened more than once with my last laptop (especially if you move it around a lot). It's an easy (and free) fix too, I'd suggest starting there if this is the case.

[memnarch]

I am reasonably sure that the error code is 0x124 (guess I wasn't clear in the first post).

The screen almost never shows the actual blue screen; most of the time the display freezes or goes black. I get the error message on the login report stating OS type, Blue Screen error type, and a mess of other things. Only saw a flash of the actual Blue Screen screen once.

[Erloas]

If you haven't made any software changes lately it limits some of the possibilities.
Is there any particular time when it happens the most? Does it happen when you aren't doing anything, only when you are playing games, when just browsing the web? Does it start right away or only after you've been on a long time or only once you open up a few different programs?

One of the more common problems if it is happening when doing computationally intensive tasks (like gaming, or rendering, transcoding, etc.) is overheating. Usually caused by dust getting into heatsinks and reducing air flow. Just a couple weeks ago while playing Borderlands with my brother he would occasionally disappear because his computer would restart. After a little bit I asked him what was going on, he said he didn't know but it had been happening with other games as well, but only sometimes (it turns out it was fine at night when the house was cool but happened more in the day). I had him bring up the control panel for his video card and check the temperatures while playing, they were in the upper 90s. A large fan on the side fixed the problem temporarily. A can of air, and a lot of dust later, the video card was clean and his temperatures where in the 60s when gaming instead of the 90s and he stopped crashing altogether.

If that is your problem or not depends on the situations when it is happening.

There are other error reporting tools then just the BSOD that you can pull up even if you aren't getting the BSOD. It is possible to disable BSODs too so they don't show up even if the error still happens. Most are under the control panel and administrator tools.

[memnarch]

Installed some different CD burner programs in the last couple of days; just uninstalled them to see if they're the cause of the recent issues. Added itunes recently as well.

The times it happens seem to be completely unrelated. I've been just viewing pictures, to just browsing the web, to listening to music and doing those two previous activities, to playing different games. Sometimes I've put the computer into sleep mode because nothing has been wrong so far and it crashes after some usage after reloading. There have been a couple times where it's been about 10-15 minutes between crashes, to half a day.
One thing of note; it seems to happen more when the battery is fully charged.

Temperature is anywhere from 45-60°C for both cpu cores.

Other error reporting programs? I'll go look for those now.

Specs;
Running Windows 7 32bit, upgraded from Vista.
4GB RAM installed
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Duel-Core processor TK-55 1.80GHz

[Kcalehc]

I bought a computer in er August last year, and had almos tthe exact same problems you describe. My computer is not the same as yours, I can tell from your specs, but a similar solution may work. In my case it was that the video drivers were at fault - oddly enough the newest ones were the problem. Uninstalling the latest drivers and downloading and installing an earlier version has fixed my problem. (I've not had any kind of crash since).

I'm not sure if this is an option, not knowing the full make/model/specs, but it's worth consideration. (especially if its an ASUS computer with an nVidia card)

[Erloas]

If it is happening fairly randomly then that makes it a lot harder to narrow down.

If you right-click on "my computer" and go to manage it has the event viewer and a few other things. I'm pretty sure Win7 also has a reliability tool of some sort that might be of some use. (I'm using Win7 but I haven't had any problems with my computer to really look into the diagnostic tools yet, I'm not at home to check it right now though)

Usually the easiest thing to try first is check to make sure all of your drives are up-to-date. There are a few programs that can tell you what is out of date, they generally charge you to update them for your automatically, but if it tells you what is out of date you can go find them for yourself. Update everything you can because it could be something you wouldn't expect.
If you can get any useful information from the BSOD, event viewer, or other reliability tools then that can make it quicker to track down the problem.

If that doesn't work then you can go try the normal overclocking stability test programs. Things like Prime95, MemTest86, and I'm sure there are a lot of others I just can't think of right now. A quick search for the basics of overclocking should give some links to good programs to test stability. You aren't of course overclocking, but the stability tests are still very useful. With those you should be able to narrow down the possible problems fairly easily, though they tend to be time-consuming tests (mostly because you have to let them run a while to stress the system and find the problems.