The "Blue Screen of Death" occurs when your computer video screen halts and nothing you do gets the computer to work. Pressing "CTRL, ALT, DEL", does not help the computer start up and the screen freezes with a blue background. The only option is to press the reset button or just turn the computer off then on again using the power button the computer or the main power switch. The typical message you get is one asking if you had installed any new hardware or software recently, and to reset the system and see if the message goes away.

Sometimes, we get lucky, I had a laptop once which had a blue screen error after knocking it lightly against the table. I believed it happened because the shock caused some hardware component to malfunction, thus causing the blue screen to occur. These random occurrences happen once and do not appear again. Another common cause is the malfunction of the RAM. RAM stands for random access memory which is used by the computer to call commands from when executing program specific instructions. Sometimes the computer seems fine and the computer application runs smoothly, however when the CPU starts having to access certain portions of the RAM which have bad sectors, that is when the problem starts, and the blue screen of death will appear.

Software can also be a culprit, over time, we may install 1 program too many on our computer and the entire system just slows down to a crawl. Background applications that we don't need run unseen and are actually taking up alot of our CPU resources. When this happens, loading Microsoft Office, opening up multiple windows takes a long time. Even shutting down the computer can take ages.

2 things I always do when a blue screen error now happens. And that is a simple 2 step approach. 1st use a registry cleaner to check if there are any errors in my operating system. Fix them if there are. If the Blue Screen error persists, then its necessary to look into the RAM. Because I have 2 sticks of RAM, I will remove one and let the computer run. By process of elimination, if the blue error does not occur, it means that the 2nd piece of ram was at fault and its time to buy a new one.

That's how I deal with my Blue Screen of Death from a "DIY" perspective and I hope it helps you!