I looked in the computer thread, but found no references to the dreaded Blue Screen. I’ve been experiencing this from time to time, and also have been having computer freeze-up recently.
Does this automatically mean that there is a nasty virus on board, or is my hard drive cashing in its chips? Something else entirely? I’m running Windows 7, have Malwarebytes and AVG Anti-Virus that tell me there are no problems, but clearly something is not right.
Before I go through all those steps that Xash recommends, is there something else I should be trying?
In my experience, intermittent blue screens means spending a few evenings trying out other people’s solutions, none of which will work for you, then biting the bullet and buying either a new MOBO (or CPU) and then, when that doesn’t fix it, buying a new CPU (or MOBO), which fixes it but leaves you realizing that with computers as cheap as they are, you should have bought a whole new one instead of just a new MOBO and CPU, which would have cost you only a few more dollars but saved a few evenings and left you with a much better computer.
The first thing is to write down, or photograph, the blue screen text and post it here.
BSODs are commonly failing hardware (CPu. memory) or a bad hardware driver. If they started happening after some change or update, that’s important for us to know too.
In my experience, a blue screen is rarely caused by a virus. It’s probably either a hardware failure or a bad driver. It’s worth it to look at the error message on the blue screen - it might look like gobbledygook, but it sometimes contains useful information. See if you can identify the driver that caused the error. If you find anything, search for the driver name and you should be able to identify what’s failing.
If you do find a driver, try updating it in the Device Manager. If that doesn’t go anywhere, then you might need to replace that hardware component. As Yeah says, it doesn’t always make sense to replace a mother board or CPU, depending on the age of the computer.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t think you can be too cautious. When I used an an old Compaq 4000 with Windows 98 Plus!, a white screen sometimes appeared and I found it to be a worse portent than the blue one, which also appeared. So beware!
I’m running the memory test now. Then I’m going to reset to an earlier time, since I recently downloaded a program that turned out to be useless. Even though I uninstalled that program, there could be problems from it. But this has been going on since prior to that.
Not sure how to look at the ‘event viewer’ system logs.
If the blue screen happens again, I’ll try to capture the info, but it seems to go through some sort of operation and then the computer reboots and things are fine. Problem is, my wife is the primary user of that computer, so I may not see it before it disappears.
To get to the Even Viewer, simply click on the start button and start typing “event viewer” into the search bar. Then click on “Event Viewer”. You can also get there via Control Panel –> Administrative Tools –> View Event Logs.
To force the computer to stop booting when a BSOD occurs (so you can actually read the error", open Control Panel –> System and Security –> Advanced System Settings –> Advanced –> Startup and Recovery Settings and uncheck “Automatically restart”.
The bad thing about BSODs is that they can be caused by so many things; hard drive, memory, motherboard, corrupt system or driver files, etc. By unchecking “Automatically restart”, you will at least get a chance to get some clue.
I’ll third or fourth the overheating issue. Check that the CPU fan is running, blow the dust out of the blades, and even replace the thermal grease between the heatsink and the CPU.
Hadn’t thought about heat. This computer isn’t all that old, but I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t opened the case since I bought it, and this is a dusty environment.
I started the computer in ‘safe’ mode and ran the antivirus and Malwarebytes programs. No problems found.
The hard drive driver appears to be up to date. I updated the monitor driver. Everything else seems to be up to date.
Ran CCleaner.
Looked at the event manager. There are some error and warning reports, but they appear to all be for the same thing and go back in history for quite some time. As I understand it, not all error messages mean there is a critical issue.
I notice that the cable connection takes forever to connect. Not sure why that is, unless the antivirus program is slowing it down.
I should mention that this is a gaming type computer, with a ton of open memory and 12GB of RAM. The hard drive is only about a quarter full, so it’s not dragging things down.
Most of my issues with BSOD have been hardware related. If your memory checks and your hdd is checking out OK, you are probably looking at something mobo or cpu related. I concur with the above, crack the case and see how grungy it is on the inside. If necessary, buy a can of air and blow out all the crud. Once you do that, run the computer up and verify the fans are all ok.
I pulled the CPU out from the cave where it’s been lurking for a couple of years and was shocked by the amount of crud caking the vent ports. I’m surprised this thing has continued to soldier on with that much dirt, fibers and cat hair gumming up the works; good thing the case is well perforated, I guess. I couldn’t figure out how to get the case cover off without a lot of effort (weird: there are four knurled nuts that can be removed, but that doesn’t seem to free up anything), so I vacuumed the vents from the exterior and then blew air into all of them. Hopefully, the fan will help extract the now-loose dust particles.
Win 8.1. It updates automatically. I’d say the last update was a under a week ago. It happened before then and after. I haven’t installed anything new, in fact I’ve never installed anything other than LastPass, Avast, Malwarebytes, ZoneAlarm and Firefox.
I have a 1 TB HD and I don’t have any movies, photos or music stored.
