Blue Screen of Death and how to fix it

The chances are – it's happened to you or it will.

The infamous “Blue Screen of Death”. Something goes wrong in your computer, and you get a blue screen, officially the “Windows Stop Message”.

But what causes it, and what's the fix? More importantly, how do you prevent it!

Causes:

Basically, it errors occurs when Windows finds a software, hardware or driver error which will not allow it to continue operating properly. To put it another way, it can happen anytime, for almost any reason!

Some of the typical error messages you'll see are:

• DIVIDE_BY_ZERO_ERROR

• IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

• REGISTRY_ERROR

• INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

• UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP

• NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM

• NMI_HARDWARE_FAILURE

There are a number of ways to fix the Blue Screen of Death, once you get one. They tend to be technical, complex, and time-consuming (not to mention flat-out confusing!).

The best offense is a good defense. Keeping your system optimized and running smoothly.

One of the root causes of many of the problems that would cause a Blue Screen of death is your Registry. In short, the registry is a huge database your computer uses to track all the software, etc. that's added to your machine. Install a program? Information is added to the registry with serial codes, install locations, etc. Uninstall a program? That information is removed. In theory!

In practice, while Windows keeps getting better, your computer does a terrible job cleaning up after itself. Information gets left behind, misplaced, and forgotten. It gets spread around and slows the computer as it has to search for the information it needs.

And, sometimes, the computer gets confused.

The result? Far too often it's the Blue Screen.

The best way to help prevent this is to get a good Registry Cleaner and run it frequently. These advanced programs scan your system, find that misplaced and abandoned information, and fixes or removes it and helps your system run smoothly. They're invaluable.

Keep your system running smoothly, and avoid the Blue Screen of Death.