The full form of BSOD is “blue screen of death” and indicates the crashing of your PC’s Windows operating system. While working, you suddenly get a blue screen showing an error saying “Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart….” and your system restarts without letting you save your current data. It is necessary to fix the BSOD error in the right way since it can lead to a loss of data and you may have to do a fresh Windows installation.
Causes of BSOD
There can be more than one primary reason for the blue screen issue. The reason for hardware failure cannot be ruled out although the chances of RAM/SMPS failure or overheating are very dim. Firstly, you should concentrate only on software-related issues that include
- Corruption of Windows system files
- Failure of device driver software
- Windows Update
- Recently installed application
- Recently added hardware
Troubleshooting BSOD in Windows
BSOD can put you in two situations. In the first scenario, you may be able to have access to the desktop, or else you may face a Windows restarting loop. In both cases, you can do several troubleshooting steps which are unearthed below.
Let’s first deal with a situation where you are not able to log in to the Windows desktop screen. After 2 or 3 restarts you will get a Windows troubleshooting screen like the one shown below.
Note: If you do not get a troubleshooting screen automatically, you can boot your PC with a Windows bootable CD or a Windows bootable USB drive. Now when you get the following screen, you need to select the Repair Windows option.
Ok, now the safest way to bring back the normal running of Windows is to restore your system to an earlier time when it was working perfectly. So choose the system restore option and select the previous date on which you think, Windows OS was behaving normally.
Through this troubleshooting mode, you can also move to the desktop screen by booting in safe mode. So select the “startup settings” option and click on the restart button.
Now you will be presented with various debugging and safe mode options. As per the below screenshot, you need to press the numeric key “4” from the keyboard to enable safe mode.
Now if you can access the desktop of your Windows OS, you can perform the following steps as per the probable cause.
Scenario 2: In case you can open the Windows desktop screen, you can follow the below-mentioned methods to resolve the BSOD error.
Windows update. If you suspect that the blue screen occurred after a recent Windows update, go to control panel>programs & Features and select “View installed updates”. Now uninstall the latest update file and restart the system in normal mode to see if the Windows error is gone.
New Software. Navigate to control panel>programs & features and uninstall the latest software or the program after which the problem started to occur.
Device Driver. Right-click on My-computer/This-PC, click on properties and now click on device manager and see if any exclamation mark or error is showing in front of any device drivers. So select the problematic driver and uninstall it.
Hardware Device. Unplug any newly installed hardware into the computer system. Sometimes, the incompatibility of hardware can cause BSOD.
Fix Windows BSOD Error
If you are still not able to resolve the issue you should install a fresh copy of Windows OS. You can download the ISO file from Microsoft and even create a bootable USB drive to start the installation. You just need to have the Windows key and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.
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