The "Blue Screen Of Death".
users of windows system r sure to have experienced, at one point or another, the terrors of ?The Fatal Exception?, commonly called the "Blue Screen Of Death", or BSOD.
when windows encounters a condition that compromises safe system operation (i.e.,a ?bug?), the system halts. this condition is called a bug check. its also commonly referred to as a system crash, a kernel error, a system fault, or a Stop error.
in general, there are not too many options for any type of recovery. normally, one tries to just "reboot" the pc in the hope that the BSOD occurred because of a rare condition of some driver which was overlooked in coding and testing. but if the BSOD persists, there are some tactics that may be employed to repair the system there are over 250 "documented" BSOD codes.
take this example, for instance; the most common bsod is :
Bugcode 0xA - IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
This is a fairly common BSOD that occurs when a driver has illegally accessed a memory location while NT is operating at a specific IRQL. This is a driver coding error, akin to trying to access an invalid memory location.
Parameters:
1 - memory location that was referenced
2 - IRQL at time of reference
3 - 0 == read, 1 == write
4 - code addressed which referenced memory
Recovery/Workaround:
There is none. This is a fatal error and is a driver coding error.
usually when a bsod occurs, it stays for a second b4 the pc imdtly restarts. this way we r unable to read what is written. to get around it, one has to disable the auto pc restart option as follows : rt click mycomp>proprerties>advanced>startup&systemrecovery >settings>unclick
automatically restart. knowing the error code, can help identify the problem/solution.
u can download The Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) Primer from
http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/sunpci/bsod.pdf
it opens as a pdf file in ur browser. click on 'save a copy' to save it.
in a lighter vein, u can also download the BSOD screensaver from
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/BlueScreen.html
to create ur own BSOD check here
[url]
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...1-5710338.html[/url] 
