Blue Screen of Death

The machines we love to hate

Moderator: Wiz Feinberg

John Hawkins
Posts: 708
Joined: 8 Apr 1999 12:01 am
Location: Onalaska, Tx. on Lake Livingston * R.I.P.
State/Province: -
Country: United States

Blue Screen of Death

Post by John Hawkins »

Hi Jack Stoner or Wiz,

I was looking over some sites of the medication / s I take today for some info. and BAAM !!! the blue screen came up. This is the second time it has happened on my ageing Dell PC-- it happened about 4 months ago and that was the very first time . I am running OP system Windows xp home . After I re-booted eveything came back up alright as far as I know --so far .No restart or re- boot problem and the programs seem to be all ok and in normal working order.

Should I be doing something to try and eliminate it from happening again or just pray !!! I am pretty much a PC "dummy " so if a fix is very complicated ( if you should think a fix is actually needed ) I'm out of luck !

Would appreciate your always good advise .

Thanks very much !
John
User avatar
Chris Dorch
Posts: 490
Joined: 15 Feb 2010 3:55 pm
Location: Wisconsin, USA
State/Province: Wisconsin
Country: United States

Post by Chris Dorch »

Since no one has answered, I will throw in my 2 cents...

The unfortunate answer is... "It depends.." BSODs can be caused by a multitude of reasons but the majority of stop errors are CPU or memory related. If you have the code, we could help discern the reason and move you forward in your solutions... If it's an aging computer, memory can be acquired fairly cheaply if the problem is due to it's failure. While CPUs can be acquired, often times buying a "new" computer would be cheaper then to fix that.

I don't know what your income stream looks like but a decent new laptop could run you as little as 3 to 4 hundred bucks. Heck, I just gave away a 3-5 year old laptop in great condition to a friend's mother.

Good luck with the computer woes... I'd say that if it doesn't happen again, don't worry about it. If it begins to happen quite regularly, then you should be concerned...
John Hawkins
Posts: 708
Joined: 8 Apr 1999 12:01 am
Location: Onalaska, Tx. on Lake Livingston * R.I.P.
State/Province: -
Country: United States

Post by John Hawkins »

Chris,
It was very good of you to answer the post !

I walk around in "dummy land " when it comes to computers so I always appreciate help and advise from folks who know about these " monsters" and how they operate .

I will certainly keep your comments and suggestions in mind and begin thinking about a PC replacement one day soon !

Again --many thanks !
John