How to troubleshoot & fix *ANY* Windows BSOD (Blue Screen of Death)

if you've been a Windows user for any length of time there is no doubt that you have probably run into this at some point sh to my little friend that my friends is called the windows blue screen of death and it has been absolutely wreaking havoc on Windows computers all the way back to 1985 now when this happens a lot of people just absolutely freak out immediately and think that their computer is completely destroyed and they just have to go out and buy a new one or they get mad and they pick it up and they throw it but most Windows blue screens are actually relatively easy to fix if you pay attention to what the blue screen tells you that's what we're going to do today so take a deep breath and let me help you figure out how to fix your own blue screen problem now before we get started there's a couple things that you need to know first of all anytime you get a blue screen the very first thing I'm going to recommend to anybody is just simply restart your computer it's entirely possible that Windows just crashed access some memory or a program caus some kind of issue with Windows and a lot of times just restarting your computer is all you have to do so don't panic restart your your computer and then see what happens if you get the blue screen again now we have something to work with additionally before you start spending money and a lot of time trying to dig into whatever the problem is pay attention also to what might have happened if the windows blue screens while you're using Windows for example if you try to open a PDF file and windows blue screens when you do that but that's the only time it happens well the problem has to do with the PDF program or maybe an infected file but it doesn't have to necessarily do with Windows or certainly not any hardware so try to keep in mind what actually caused the blue screen if you're in Windows now if you turn your computer on and windows just blue screens right off the bat then that's really what we want to focus on but using a little common sense sometimes will get you a long way in trying to figure out what the problem is so last thing I'm going to reference a few videos that I've made in this video um and as a disclaimer if you choose to go that route and try to actually follow those steps on how to repair a Windows blue screen there's a couple things that you're going to need first of all I'd highly recommend you get two empty flash drives one is going to be to create a Windows installer disc that you may need to actually access the troubleshooting menus and you'll see all that in the video the other one is to create a boot disc called Hein which allows you a bunch of different utilities where you can scan check hard drives check memory do all kinds of things and also access your files if you need them just in case you need to wipe windows and just reinstall lastly if if you have an old computer laying around even though you don't use it anymore but it functions hold on to it put it in a drawer or in a closet in case you need it because if your computer doesn't work you do need a way to get online and download these discs and this may be the only working machine in the house even though it's slow those videos I point you to will walk you through it so don't throw it away don't donate it if you have a working computer no matter how old it is hold on to it so let me introduce myself my name is Scott I've been in it for about 30 years and and I've seen just about anything imaginable in Windows so I'm here to bring you tips tricks performance enhancements all kinds of things and answer any questions you might have now I've made a handful of other videos about how to troubleshoot uh Windows problems and things like that this is the first time I've done a video specifically on blue screen so I'm going to cover a lot of the uh highlights and I will link all the other videos in the video description if you'd like them or I'll put them up top here and you you can click on those watch them and come back so I'm going to do the overview first so that you have a general idea of what you need to do and then if you want to tackle it yourself you can go watch those videos and you'll know exactly what you need to do come back and fix your own problem the second thing you need to know is that there is no way one person can just automatically know how to fix a particular blue screen those blue screens include what are called stop codes and error codes and there are literally hundreds of them now I'm sure there's people out there that know a bunch of stop codes off the top of their head and frankly these are not people I want to hang out with so one of the things that we're going to touch on is first of all figuring out which stop code it is when you get that blue screen that's going to help us troubleshoot we'll get to that in a minute the third most important thing that you need to know is that a blue screen can only be caused by software or Hardware there are no other options that's a pretty big divide so what you don't want to do is spend all your time chasing a software problem when it's a hardware problem and vice versa so that's where reading those codes and learning what they are is going to make all the difference in you troubleshooting that problem so when you get one of these blue screens on your computer one of two things is going to happen it's either going to stay on the screen long enough for you to read the stop code or it's going to immediately restart your computer now if you can still get into windows at some point there's a few settings in there that you can change that will force that blue screen to stay on your screen so you can read it but here's a pro tip for you just grab your cell phone go to your camera hit video and put your camera right in front of the screen at the bottom of the screen and restart your computer hit record and then what'll happen is is you'll actually record a short video of that blue screen at which point you can then pause the video take a screenshot of that blue screen and then you can blow it up and read it that's the first big hurdle in this battle because we have to know what the blue screen is in order to fix it so in this example you see that this particular stop code is 0xc 000021a what in the world does that mean doesn't matter we're going to look it up and we're going to find out so do like you do with everything else and go to Google and type in stop code 0x c000021a obviously if your blue screen error is a different code that's the code you want to type into Google hit enter and look at the results and don't be surprised if you don't understand what any of it means we'll get to that in a second now remember I told you before blue screen problems are going to either be Hardware or software they can only be one of the two so this does involve a little bit of common sense but you don't have to be a computer person to completely understand what the error message means you just have to kind of understand what it generally is saying let's take this for example this particular error means that status system process terminated I know what I'm doing so I know that's a software problem but let's read further this error occurs when a critical process such as a when log on and you see it's referencing a specific file or the client server runtime subsystem again referencing a software file fails once the colel detects that either of those Services have stopped it raises that particular error so as you can see it doesn't mention anything about a impending hard drive failure it doesn't mention anything about a bad memory stick it doesn't mention anything about your CPU or your graphics card which those would be Hardware problems anytime your stop code or blue screen error code mentions a process a kernel a system file anything like that you automatically need to think this is a Windows problem another thing you can do is just dig further down into the search results a lot of times you'll get to places like Reddit which is fantastic for error codes people on Reddit are always willing to help uh other people try to figure out the problems but someone at some point will take that error code and explain it in language that finally clicks with you and then you'd be like okay perfect it's a Windows problem now we have literally just eliminated half the problem now as you can see in this particular Reddit fix I didn't know what the 21A error message was exactly I didn't really care uh I just needed to know what direction to go okay so now I know it's a Windows problem I dug a little deeper and it looks like it has something to do with the windows log on process so the person that responded on reic just said boot into safe mode run sfc scan now which is just a basic Windows utility that I talk about in one of my videos and I'll link that right up here and that should take care of it and if not YouTube is such a great resource you could literally type in that error code into YouTube and just follow those instructions even if you don't watch my videos follow those instructions until you get the results that you want at that point you've tried everything you can think of now maybe it is time to call computer professional but there is such a vast number of videos on YouTube and Google that can help you this is the best way to do it now for a lot of people they see that blue screen and they just freak out but if they stop and take a deep breath look at what the blue screen is telling them then simply take that stop code throw it into Google and see what it says you would be surprised if you tried to open a spreadsheet and it suddenly for some reason didn't open you might instinctively just restart your computer and then after the restart magically works congratulations you know how to troubleshoot that's all blue screens are is troubleshooting now some are much more complicated than others some actually require you to remove parts from your computer I've even seen a DVD drive cause a blue screen craziest thing I've ever seen but yeah soon as I pulled that DVD drive out popped a new one in problem went away what I'm getting at today is that you can't possibly know how to fix every possible blue screen but you can use the resources that are available to you and now because of what I just explained to you you have a good idea of how to attack the problem and that is half the battle if nothing else if you have to take it to a computer professional you don't have to pay them a diagnostic charge to do exactly what I just showed you you can walk in there and say this is a Windows problem I need you to fix it and if they say well no it might be this no I know what the problem is I just don't know how to fix it I don't want to fix it whatever but at least you're not going to pay additional fee for them to Google that error code and do exactly what I just showed you now if you have done everything you can think of and you still can't get rid of the blue screen but you can still get into Windows you should absolutely check out this next video it is one of my most popular videos and in it I show you the script that you can run that literally goes through and cleans Windows better than you've ever seen it before it's going to result in Faster performance and it will likely take care of whatever's causing those blue screens you should absolutely check it out

Channel: Ask Your Computer Guy

Views: 80,298

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Id: cp5qbrKrDME

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 03 2024