You all must have been struck by the blue screen of death...specially the windows users....these may arise due to hardware as well as software problems....
so...what could be the possible reasons of PC crashing...

This post has been edited by klusk: Feb 19 2008, 04:11 AM

Well i guess the basic stuff of prevention is to use reputable software (doesnt mean you have to pay for it but software that is rather well known) keep a secure system, with AV's and firewall. If it's an old pc dont overload it by trying to do too much, also i its fairly old run the disk keeping tools every now and then.

And if you want to avoid the blue screen of death forever get rid of windows!

On a related note i got a blue screen a little while ago on my nice new laptop. I was running google earth with one of their little addon map things and it just blue screened. Bad times. I shall be avoiding google earth untill i can be bothered to do a fresh install. I expect it was the extension file that caused the error.


I dont know the exact cause of the blue screen, i dont think microsoft do either, but general computer maintenance will hopefully reduce the risk.

here are a few reasons that i found out.....


There are other reasons like bad ram and hard disk error or virus problem

AHA!!! that is the second person that can confirm that google applications have some serious memory issues, me being the first. The last time I had a BSOD I had installed that google pack and my laptop kept on BSODing on me so I had to uninstall it. Well shadow is to something without getting to specific so I help fill in the gaps there, the first thing you want to do is defrag, and clean out your computer of programs and files you no longer use.

The next thing I would do is reboot the computer go into the boot menu and select the diagnostic program and do a full run making note of any errors you might have and search for them later. This takes up to an hour to run but well worth it to see what you might have to do and stuff.

Next it would be a good time to get a registry cleaner and clean that out as sometimes a clog registry can lead into problems, as for a good software I would go with Glary Utilities as it has some good modules to help clean up your computer.

Sometimes a simple system restore will clear that BSOD, and usually you want to go a couple of weeks back before the BSOD start to happen.

Also it would be wise to go into safe mode and then when your security suite to see if it picks up anything, and same with spyware and all that good stuff. When you go into safe mode your computer is literally cut off from the internet so you will be able to find something a lot better.

Also depending on the type of user you are from simple user who checks email and thats it. to a user who beats the crap out of their computer with hardcore use. You might look into replacing parts and in this case its usually the Hard drive and the RAM that you would replace.

Of course worse case scenario and sometimes it is recommending after 1-2 years of years of use and that is to completely re-install the operating system to really clean up the errors and erasing all that good stuff you accumulated over time.

Well I'd have to go with the Microsoft programmers at fault here. I'm not really sure what else you want us to say other than that's what computers do. Computers are designed to do a broad number of tasks, and the broader they are designed the more flaws they could have. When is the last time that your microwave got a BSoD? Thats because It only is designed to have limited tasks and it is programmed very well to do those tasks.

Also: klusk, quote those posts fast before the admins catch you.
http://faq.programmerworld.net/pc/10-reaso...-pcs-crash.html.

You could write a book about it and still not answer it, but the most common are: OS is crap, you can't program, and finally, your hardware doesn't like its neighbors.

Not enough memory
Overheating
Incompatible Driver

and .... Windows

Yes, windows can crash anytime without any reason

This is all well and everything, IRQ's can cause crashes, and so can any 3rd party software that is installed on it. I guess I'm an old hater of Microsoft for various reasons, but I have been struggling with it for as long as I can remember. Starting with Windows 3.1, I've had little to no problems, even when running programs and 3rd party things (thought most of them were run in a DOS enviroment) But soon, with Win98, I began to loath Microsoft. Things never run smoothly. Granted, it is difficult to run the perfect system, but still.

Also, Windows XP is quite stable, but crashes easily. Luckily, the amounts of Blue Error Screens of Death I've encountered is a lot less. I believe that Windows Vista is really pushing it, and even Vista has crashed before my eyes. Completely.

So mostly, I think that rather than hardware, software is the main cause of systems that crash. Adware and spyware that sits in your RAM causes crashes as well.


And not enough disk space. I was once in a form of 0bytes left on my main drive, and my windows crashed because it couldn't create the swapfile.