PC producing a large number of blue screen errors

Darkans · 4 Apr 2017 at 18:04

So I've had this PC for a while and recently it's been blue screening a lot, sometimes it refuses to boot after just giving me more blue screens. Originally I thought it was the ram so I've tried various combos of all the sticks but nothing seems to work.

Errors including exception not handled, critical process failure, bad pool header, kernel errors and the like. Any ideas? Faulty windows install perhaps?

edGfaCTor · 4 Apr 2017 at 18:24

Have you checked your ssd or hdd?

Darkans · 4 Apr 2017 at 18:32

edGfaCTor said:
Have you checked your ssd or hdd?

I have no other drives to plug in to test atm, now it's not booting at all just giving me the same error "critical process died". I'll see if I can get a different drive to test, thanks.

Plec · 4 Apr 2017 at 19:15

What's the total spec?

Is the system clocked at all and if it is set it back to stock/defaults.

Remove all but one stick of memory and run memtest - check each stick (will take a while).

Darkans · 4 Apr 2017 at 22:38

Plec said:
What's the total spec?

Is the system clocked at all and if it is set it back to stock/defaults.

Remove all but one stick of memory and run memtest - check each stick (will take a while).

I can't run anything atm it won't even boot in safe mode, just keeps saying critical process failed so I think the drive has gone, I'll be able to test it tomorrow and will update then.

Habakkuk · 4 Apr 2017 at 22:50

Try using a USB live stick to run stress-testing programs like Prime95 on the system.

Memtest86+ is also recommended.

dt97583 · 5 Apr 2017 at 01:17

Most BSOD are due to drivers so try Safe Mode. Alternatively try a bootable Linux CD. If you boot into Linux and it's stable (i.e. the hardware is fine) then reinstall Windows. It's possible to determine which driver is causing the BSOD but this requires at the very least a kernel memory dump and someone to work through this - you'd need to upload it somewhere for me to do this.

Plec · 5 Apr 2017 at 08:57

Davidmt83 makes a good point. I have a bootable Ubuntu stick - one because i like playing with Ubuntu but two it can act as a quick diagnostic tool.

It's a simple test and will yield instant diagnostic results if it loads stable.

You can use optical media or USB stick - very easy and lots of guides.