Arghhh! Blue Screen Of Death!

[ade]

About a month ago my PC started to switch itself off for no reason then reboot. Did a virus scan - nothing. Was suggested it was overheating.

Anyway - got blue screen of death last night - although not death as such - just a major fail and had to restart it.

Took it apart this morning and hoovered about a pound of dead skin and dust and spider sh1te out the back of it.

Turned it back on - worked ok then blue screen of death appeared again!

:cry:

PC's loaded with so much stuff just now I'm frantically trying to back everything up before it does major fail for ever!

On the plus side though just bought a Compaq Presario SR5219 off the bay for £175 - tower only but as mines a Presario at the moment I can just plug my existing peripherals in to it and of I go.

Anyone know if there is any way of fixing a blue screen of fail?

[matt_vaughan]

Its usually a RAM/memory problem iirc.

Always a driver too iirc.

Problem is they dont stick around long enough for you to right stuff down.

Mine are nearly always graphics related with memory in there somewhere.

[AlexW]

You can set it so it wont restart automaticly, cant remember where though, have a lookie through the control panel.

It could be the RAM, but my bets are with the HDD, ive had 3 go wrong just this year.

[phazer]

On XP, right click My Computer, choose properties. On the Advanced tab click Settings under Startup and Recovery. Un check the Automatically Restart box.

Next time it blue screens make a note of the STOP code at the top of the screen and then search on the Microsoft Knowledgebase/Technet to see what the likely cause is.

As others have suggested, its usually memory or driver related. One thing that often does the trick is to take each ram stick out and reseat it - the connectors oxide and over the years can cause a bad connection. Reseating it rubs this away giving a good connection again.

[ade]

cheers guys!