Stop errors

Todays post is about stop errors, otherwise known as the Blue Screen(s) of Death.

A Blue Screen of Death, or BSoD, happens when a piece of software attempts to do something it is not allowed to do, and Windows has no way to handle the error this causes except to stop working and give the person using the computer(the user) an error message.
This error message is called a stop error because Windows stops whatever it was doing at the time.

Just about everyone who has used a Windows-based computer has experienced the BSoD at one time or another.

The reason it is called the Blue Screen of Death (or Doom) is because you lose anything and everything you were working on at the time and your only option for getting back into Windows is to restart the computer.

Now that we know what a BSoD is, now we have to see what all the stuff in the error means, so that maybe whatever caused the error can be fixed.
According to Wikipedia, "the text on the error screen contains the code of the error as well as its symbolic name (e.g. 0x0000001E, KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED) along with four error-dependent values in parentheses that are there to help software engineers with fixing the problem that occurred. Depending on the error code, it may display the address where the problem occurred, along with the driver which is loaded at that address. Under Windows NT and 2000, the second and third sections of the screen may contain information on all loaded drivers and a stack dump, respectively. The driver information is in three columns; the first lists the base address of the driver, the second lists the driver's creation date (as a Unix timestamp), and the third lists the name of the driver."

Each BSoD usually displays a message such as FILE_SYSTEM as well as a number like 0x00000022. The usual parameters displayed for the BSoD are the following:

   number of error (parameter, parameter, parameter, parameter) name of error

Knowing all of the above information is important in understanding and determining the cause of the Blue Screen.

If you computer "blue screens" then what you should do is:

1. Write down the name of the error message (i.e. MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION or whatever is in all caps).

1. Write down the error number (it will look like "0x00000000").

1. If Windows says why it stopped (for example, "driver error" or something specific not just "Windows stopped working to protect your system") write that down too.

You may be thinking "why should I do this, when I wont be fixing it?" The answer is if you have a repair done because of the Blue Screen, you will be able to tell the repairman what the error said so that they know where the problem is. Or so that you can look it up on the internet yourself.