Icrontic is proud to offer the Office Hours series of articles. Each week we’ll take a look at a common problem in Windows or often-used software and nail down a quick fix for it. This week, the good doctor discusses the uselessness of the ubiquitous blue screen of death and the futility in troubleshooting one.

The symptom

The infamous blue screen of death. Dreaded. Mystical. Few symptoms of a system gone awry are more well-known or evident than the mighty BSOD. For all the information these screens apparently provide, you might be surprised to learn that these error screens reveal very little about the problem at work.

What is a blue screen of death?

The stop error, better known as a BSOD, occurs when a component of Windows that is running with full access to system resources encounters an error from which it cannot recover. Such components include the very heart of the OS known as the kernel, or a system driver given license to operate with kernel-level privileges.

Microsoft uses the limited screen space of the BSOD to deliver four basic pieces of information:

• The symbolic name of the error, such as DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. This cryptic name means something to Microsoft, but it means little to the average user.
• The stop code, such as *** STOP: 0×000000D1. This number identifies the actual error that occurred. These are important because there may not be a symbolic name for the error at hand.
• The error-dependent values located in the parentheses after the *** STOP may indicate the location in system memory where the error occurred.
• Lastly, Windows may identify a specific driver responsible for the system’s instability. In the above image, myfault.sys is allegedly to blame for the error at hand.

Why the BSOD is useless

While this information may seem informative, the referenced driver — if Windows references one — may only be the final stop in a chain of events that lead to the current fault. Is this driver conflicting with another? Is hardware to blame? Is corruption in critical system files inducing a fault in an otherwise healthy device driver? The unenlightening stop error has done little more than indicate that some privileged component of Windows has stubbed its toe.

In light of the BSOD’s cryptic nature, it is still possible to ascertain the actual cause of the stop. This is because many systems are compelled to produce a mini-dump at the time a stop error occurs. This mini-dump is a 64k file that contains extended information about the processes, drivers and hardware that were in play when the system halted.

Once the dump is produced, it must be loaded into a kernel debugger which can perform a stack trace to determine the true source of the error. A separate computer can also step in and begin the debugging process at the time of the stop error if it is connected to the afflicted PC via firewire. If this sounds like a tremendous hassle, that’s because it is.

Any user who has endured endless and sporadic stop errors knows that search engines point to a dozen solutions for every imagineable error. Above all, this is the most damning evidence that the blue screen of death does not directly indicate the culprit. In point of fact, this article would not be necessary if stop errors actually pointed to the offending component.

How to deal with them

Given that I cannot — will not — be arsed to perform stack tracing on my operating system, I assume that  any of the following can be true for a user’s stop error:

• Some aspect of the hardware configuration is in error. Perhaps the user has bad memory, a dying hard drive, or a failing motherboard.
• Files critical to the continued operation of Windows XP have become damaged. This might include the registry, the kernel, or core libraries. The damage may be from Windows rot or a malware infection.
• The referenced driver is really and truly bad. Its installation may have been corrupted or the driver revision in play has a genuine bug.

Users slogging through a maddening chain of blue screens are advised to perform the following steps in resolving the error:

1. If a specific driver is referenced in the stop error, attempt to boot to Windows safe mode to remove that driver from the system. Manually delete the file and remove all references to it in the registry if you must.
2. If no driver is referenced, look to your hardware to verify that your hard disk and memory are in good condition. Similarly, be sure that the temperature of your CPU does not exceed approximately 60 degrees centigrade.
3. Can I interest you in a reformat? If your hardware checks out, it’s the easiest and fastest way to send any Windows error packing.

Post-mortem

In theory, the infamous blue screen of death serves to inform users of a critical error in an obvious and practical way. Yet, in practice, the the ambiguous events that acted to spawn the error make the BSOD mildly uninformative at its very best.

Rather than going to war with an opponent who yields no ground, it is better to begin anew. Playing into the hands of madness by troubleshooting the unenlightening Windows BSOD only leads to lost time and considerable frustration.

Here’s to hoping that future error screens are more useful than our closest, most hated friend.

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Tags: office hours, Windows