The Blue Screen of Death!

By: Wesley Atkins

Microsoft Corporation © calls it a system stop error. Most
computer users call it terrifying. Programmers call it the Blue
Screen of Death (BSOD). Causes of the blue screen vary and while
the blue screen details information on memory locations in your
computer that are probable causes, often they are only symptoms.

The recommended course of action starts with writing down the
information on the blue screen and then restarting your
computer. More often than not the computer will start right back
up and act as if nothing ever happened. The users then franticly
back-up everything they can as fast as possible, the first time.

If your BSOD experiences starts after installing new hardware
and/or software there is a good chance the new stuff is at
fault. No Problemo, just uninstall or reinstall following the
directions this time and the problem is all gone, maybe. If you
don't see a blue screen again you are golden.

Most blue screen of death experiences fall in the technical
realm of head scratchers. Also known as the FIIK syndrome (Frack
If I Know, for you Battlestar Galactica fans). My most recent
BSOD experience fell in the FIIK category. In the past I have
had memory blue screen of death issues. A bad sector on the hard
drive and a memory module that aged poorly. Both are fairly easy
to fix.

For the hard drive the old reliable check disk utility ferreted
out the culprit and marked the bad sector. For the memory bug,
well I had to bite the bullet and buy a new memory module. This
new one was a lot cheaper and larger than the old one, so it was
less painful.

Unfortunately, my latest BSOD was not one, but a series of
BSOD's. This would be called a reoccurring FIIK situation.
During the battle, I minimalized the laptop. Deleting every
seldom used program. Virus scanning was a daily chore with
QQROB, a seemingly docile little bug discovered and chased all
over the hard drive. I managed to corner QQROB during a
concerted search and destroy effort and deleted the rascal. Or
so I thought. QQ is a sneaky little rapscallion that must have
tucked itself into a cozy little corner of memory or the hard
drive. Finally, I gave in to QQROB and just let the virus
software block the little ... devil.

Just yesterday morning I awoke and fired up the little HP laptop
to check my Spam, I mean email. My computer was stuck in a
infinite loop. It would start and just as it was time for the
operating system to kick in, my once trusty HP defaulted to the
select boot device drive and quickly restarted. While I am sure
there is a computer guru that could have repaired this minor
problem, I personally had had enough.

Falling back on my vast knowledge of MSDOS, I used a system CD
disk that I had created to load the basic command.com on my
ailing computer and repartitioned my hard drive. This a very
quick and effective method for destroying everything on your
hard drive. This would not be recommended if you have
information on the drive you are fond of. I was much more
concerned with killing the little QQROB.... Bugger, than saving
any data.

Certain that QQROB was a thing in my past, I blew the dust off
the system recovery CD's and started to reinstall everything on
the old HP. With the condition of the recovery disk set, this
proved to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. Toothpaste
does seem to be very effective in removing various types of crud
that seems to attract itself to the business side of CD's. After
a lot of polishing and about 600 entries of "r" for retry
instead of abort or fail, my little HP is back in action. While
everything on the laptop works, it does have a bit of a retro
look with AOL 6.0 and a desktop full of cutting edge software
advertisements like Microsoft Money 2002.

The moral of this little story is never leave anything on your
computer you cannot live without unless it is backed up! The
second moral would be to store your system restore disk in an
area other than the general CD/DVD storage area. Some, not so
computer literate members of your family may try to play the
recovery disks in aging CD players.

One last note; on-line back-up of photos in a variety of free
sites is an excellent idea. Don't tell anyone but saving other
information as attachments to an email to yourself, saved on
your email provider's site is a good idea too. I learned this
little trick after a hurricane storm surge proved to be a little
more than my typical archiving methods could handle. Have a
lovely blue screen free day.



About the author:
Wesley Atkins is the owner of Reviewbooth.com that reviews some
of the latest advancements in technology including computer hardware reviews,
software, digit
al camera reviews and cell phone reviews. Visit us at:
http://www.reviewbooth.com to stay updated on our latest news
and reviews.