How to Fix a PC with Blue Screen of Death - DIY in 5 Ep 160

The dreaded Blue Screen of Death that shows up in Windows when something has gone drastically wrong is wildly frustrating, pops up out of nowhere and can be difficult to troubleshoot, plus it’s more than a bit terrifying to think your system may be in need of a costly repair. Try not to panic, we’ll walk through some basic techniques you can use to diagnose and fix a blue screen of death or BSOD on your own.

What is a BSOD?
A blue screen of death is the technically called a stop error or fatal system error and it happens when the OS crashes due to no longer being able to run safely. The blue screen of death has seen many iterations over the years with Windows 10 even having a frowny face just in case you weren’t sad enough about it already. Fortunately, this screen also will tell you some information about what the problem was then it will restart. Take a picture of it with your phone if you have one nearby since you can’t copy and paste once you are in BSOD mode and it may restart fairly quickly so move fast. If you are using Windows 10, you’ll also see a QR code which will take you directly to Microsoft’s blue screen troubleshooting page on your phone, but you may not need to get that deep into things yet.

Restart
Causes can range from a random one-time hiccup to a driver issue to operating system errors to failing hardware so there’s a lot to eliminate when troubleshooting but that error code will give you a good place to start digging. Because a random hiccup is the least tricky issue, reboot and hope that it works perfectly fine when it starts back up.

System Restore
If you continue to experience BSODs after that, ask yourself what you were doing on the PC just before things went all blue. Did you just install a new program, update a driver, start using a new piece of hardware, install a Windows update? If so, try to rollback that change. You can either do this manually or use the System Restore tool in Windows to revert to a previous restore point. If you are using Windows 10, open the control panel and type recovery in the search bar, then click Open System Restore and follow the on screen prompts.

Drivers
While sometimes a driver or Windows update can cause a bluescreen error, other times driver or Windows updates might be exactly the fix you need. We know this might be confusing contradictory, but if the fix is as simple as checking for any pending updates and applying them, try this.

Malware and Viruses
Sometimes it might be malware or a virus that’s causing your PC to misbehave - messing with system files on the DL. Use your security checkup of choice either within Windows Defender or third party like Malwarebytes to find and remove problematic software. Once this is done, reboot and see if your bluescreen woes are gone for good. Another potential solution, if you think that a damaged Windows system file could be to blame is by running an SFC scan. This is a command line tool built right into Windows that will check system files and attempt to fix them. Simply search “command prompt” in your search bar, right click to open as administrator then type sfc /scannow. Give it some time, see if anything shows up.

Safe Mode
While you may be able to try everything we’ve discussed so far within Windows up until this point, if your computer won’t let you get in far enough to do that, you can try booting Windows into Safe Mode to run some diagnostics and quickly backup important files. Safe mode allows you to load a basic Windows config with just the essentials. If you can work in safe mode without getting bluescreened, then something installed - an app or service - could be the culprit.

Hardware Issues
If you still haven’t found the culprit, perhaps it’s not software, but hardware failure that’s to blame. It could be a failing stick of RAM, a faulty hard drive or worse. Good news is a new SSD or memory module is easy to replace and certainly simpler than replacing your entire PC. Searching the web for the exact exact error message you hopefully took a photo of with your phone when you got that blue screen of death, since it may help point you in the correct direction. Windows has a monitoring tools to help with System Diagnostics and a dedicated Memory Diagnostic tool that you can run from the control panel. If nothing turns up here, there are third party options out there like MemTest86, a free tool that is more powerful than the built in Windows Memory Diagnostic tool and specifically tests RAM. CrystalDiskInfo is also free and will specifically test hard drives.

Reinstall Windows
If you still haven’t found the solution you might try a fresh install of Windows. Back everything up first. You can do this a few different ways, some require more patience than others, but all of them should give your PC a fresh start.

We hope one of these fixes did the trick so, let us know about your most recent BSOD experience in the comments.

#bluescreenofdeath
#bsod
#windowstips
Hosted by @TrishaHershberger

[kingston]

You can follow Kingston on social media:

[iuriineves]

I love it when tutorials teaching how to fix an unusable pc tell me to open something INSIDE the NOT USABLE pc

[pamrizo]

My screen went blue after I did an update it was asking me it needed. How can I do the recovery thing if I can't get out if the blue screen options

[motheranddaughterplumerias]

I got a NTSF BSOD after doing a factory reset on my windows 10 hp pavilion laptop. Will not boot into safe mode. I'm sure it's a driver issue from the reset, but how can I fix it if I can't even boot into safe mode?

[sandrocks]

Thank you I was stuck on this blue screen called critical service failed I also kept seeing critical process died in this video pretty much helped me I keep getting blue screens but not as much as before

[rnebjnt]

Definitely tricky sometimes 😆 had to deal with one such BSOD this year.

[stro]

my pc blue screened about 13 times so far today, the bad news was that i was in vs code and forgot to save like half of those times, i always get bluescreens while coding lol

[EdmundoCherrington]

Had that happen to me last week so what I did is change hard drive to get it fix. It runs back up perfectly.

[pamrizo]

I wish you could show us how, like show us the steps on what to do for each one. Like I don't know how to get out of the blue screen to do what you said. I don't know how to open safe mode either. Did you know how to do this yourself or where did you learn all this information from? Please help

[weishengchua]

What does its mean if it show IRQL not less or equal, and sometimes it show memory management

[johnkevinsilagan]

I got a BSOD from updating the driver and unfortunately didn't creat a system restore point 🥺 the tutorial here though says I have to create it from the windows screen. How can I get access to those if my pc is on the verge of looping??? 😫😫😫

[benetgladwin]

THANK YOU 🙏🙏🙏 I was stuck on an endless BSOD loop for almost two hours but following the system restore fix did the trick!!

[GoaWay...]

I didn't get an error code.
The bsod won't let me do a system restore, a reset with or without my files saved, no command prompts have worked, and I can't boot from safe mode.
Nothing is working.
I don't know if this is happening because of malware my antivirus found, the face that I had two antivirus running simultaneously, or because I possibly interrupted bios update.

[murungipatienceket]

How do I start doing that yet there is no cursor on the screen,

[jimmygoforth]

just had a bsod problem was receiving 4 different codes luckily i figured it fairly quick it was a bios update that was needed had first tried ram and a fresh install of windows and then did the bios and now runs as it should

[yogeswaransirramayasuppiah]

wat if the bsod just shows when u turn on ur pc?, u do a force shutdown and restart the pc and again the same bsod blue screen error shows up again N again upon restart? wat should i do?

[LeviUnboxing]

Can you try using command trolley to exit that

[GailM]

Many thanks! Control Alt Delete freed me from the BSoD!

[thomas]

I bought a laptop a few years ago. Seemed to have BSOD every few weeks. I reinstalled Windows, reinstalled system drivers from the manufacturers website. Presently, no BSOD but now video drivers are not working and can't be updated. Time to toss this bag of chips in the trash? BTW after the second bsod, I changed from a Hard Disk to an SSD. That sped things up. But still had more BSODs . . .

[itsmeeverest]

I had to change my Windows 2 times last time I had BSoD. First it happened on my 8.1, so I got 10. Happened in it again, then switched to 8, and finally got rid of the problem. The error code solution didn't provide much help as it was showing different error codes after each fix, so I had to replace. 😓