What is the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)? How do I fix it?

Have you ever encountered the blue frowny face screen while using your Windows computer? If you’ve been unfortunate enough to experience it, you’re probably wondering exactly what went wrong with your computer. Let’s break it down.

Windows encounters more errors than you might expect - dozens, sometimes hundreds of small things go wrong every hour your use your computer, but Windows is able to self-correct many of these errors. While some may slip through the cracks, they typically won’t impact your system much. On a related note, it’s for this reason that many IT specialists recommend you regularly restart your computer - it gives Windows a chance to start fresh, without all the bloat it builds up after running for a long time. Despite its best efforts, Windows isn’t always able to avoid fatal system errors. These errors are problematic enough that Windows needs to stop running altogether.

Enter the Stop Error: This is what the BSoD is more formally known as, and it halts the Windows Operating System entirely, logging the error and displaying the famous Blue Screen.

If you see a BSoD once in a blue moon, don’t worry about it too much. Random accidents happen, and most of the time an occaisonal BSoD isn’t an indicator that something is broken. Let Windows automatically restart, and you should be good to go.

However, if your computer is consistently Blue Screening during a particular operation (such as a video render) or frequently in general, it may be a good idea to take a look at possible hardware/software malfunctions.

Unfortunately, the number of possible culprits for a blue screen of death is far too high for us to write about solutions for each one, but Microsoft has you covered.

Take note of the Error Code displayed on the BSoD. Then, paste it into a search engine and typically a Microsoft help article regarding your error will come up - this should give you a good idea of what component might have had an issue. Additionally, a clean Windows install can help if your error codes seem to be all over the place. If you’re still having trouble, check out Microsoft’s support article on Blue Screen errors.