WINDOWS VISTA BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH

Users of windows system are sure to have experienced, at one point or another, the terrors of “The Fatal Exception”, commonly called the "Blue Screen Of Death", or BSOD. Although the BSOD has largely been thrown onto the software slag heap, in Vista, crashes haven't been totally banished. When windows encounters a condition that compromises safe system operation (i.e. a “bug”), the system halts. This condition is called a 'bug check'. It is also commonly referred to as a system crash, a kernel error, a system fault, or a Stop error. When Windows encounters such a serious error that forces it to stop running, it displays a BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH or just 'lovingly' called BSOD !

In Vista, unlike XP, where the system was essentially manual, the Windows Error Reporting has been improved & streamlined. and improved in Windows Vista. One had to follow-up to see if a solution had become available. This was a rather painful process ! In Vista, this entire reporting and follow-up process is automated.

These days a Vista user is more often likely to see a message as follows : "Microsoft Windows Operating System is not responding." And users are given two possibilities. They can either "Close the program" or "Wait for the program to respond." One waits in the hope that the issue will be resolved; or else then one just closes the program and gets prepared to lose information. Atleast, these messages look less daunting.

The BSODs on the other hand were/are quite traumatic and frustrating, to say the least!

The exact text of a Stop error varies, according to what caused the error. But the format is standardized and is made up of 3 parts:

PART 1.
Symbolic error name: This is the Stop Error message that is given to the OS and corresponds to the Stop Error number that appears.

PART 2.
Troubleshooting recommendations: This text applies to all Stop Errors of that particular type.

PART 3.
Error number and parameters: Its the bugcheck information. The text following the word STOP includes the error number, in hexadecimal notation, and up to four parameters that are typical of this error type.

In general, there are not too many options for any type of recovery. normally, one tries to just "reboot" the pc in the hope that the BSOD occurred because of a rare condition of some driver which was overlooked in coding and testing. But if the BSOD persists, there are some tactics that may be employed to repair the system there are over 250 "documented" BSOD codes.

Take for example, the most common BSOD :

Bugcode 0xA - IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

This is a fairly common BSOD that occurs when a driver has illegally accessed a memory location while NT is operating at a specific IRQL. This is a driver coding error, akin to trying to access an invalid memory location. Parameters:

1 - memory location that was referenced
2 - IRQL at time of reference
3 - 0 == read, 1 == write
4 - code addressed which referenced memory

Recovery/Workaround:

There is none. This is a fatal error and is a driver coding error.

Usually when a BSOD occurs, it stays for a second before the PC immediately restarts. This way we are unable to read what is written. To get around it, one has to disable the auto pc-restart option from the StartUp & System Recovery settings. Knowing the error code, can help identify the problem/solution.

Disable UAC. Control Panel > System And Maintenance > System > Advanced System Settings > Advanced tab > Under Startup And Recovery > Click Settings > Clear the Automatically Restart check box > click OK. Enable UAC.

You can also get your BSOD auto-analysed at the Microsoft Online Crash Analysis. If you experience a Blue Screen crash event, or Stop error, while using Microsoft Windows, you can upload the error report to this site for analysis. Microsoft will actively analyzes all error reports and prioritizes them based on the number of customers affected by the Stop error covered in the error report and try to determine the cause of the Stop error you have submit.

Source: winvistaclub