Recently I purchased a new brand name computer. Two days after receiving the computer a blue screen of death message appeared: “A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. If this is the first time you’ve seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps: Check to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the Stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters. Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select advanced startup options, and then select Safe Mode. Technical Information: *** STOP: 0×0000008E (0xC0000005, 0×81C91323, 0×84D27790, 0×00000000)”. I restarted the computer and it booted and was usable without any problems. However, when I started the computer the next day the BSOD message appeared again and it also appears randomly when using the computer causing me to lose work. I have not tried any remedies yet, as I wanted to obtain your advice beforehand.

Blue screen of death STOP errors are the Windows equivalent of a kernel panic (which can occur on other computer platforms, such as Mac and Linux). This error indicates that something so serious has occurred that the computer should not try and recover from the error, instead just halt all operations, dump core memory to a file (in case this would be useful for troubleshooting purposes) and display the rather uninformative error message. Since this computer is brand new it is unlikely to be a driver or related issue, as the manufacturer would normally ensure that all drivers included with the computer work and are compatible with the system (since the computer system is mass produced). So, we will first be investigating a potential hardware related issue with the computer.

The most common hardware fault with a computer that causes a BSOD message is fault memory. If the computer attempts to write to memory and either cannot complete the write operation, or alternatively writes to memory but the contents of memory becomes corrupted, this can cause Windows to enter into a tail-spin and present the blue screen message. As such, it would be prudent for us to test the computer memory to see whether that is the problem. There is a very good free utility called MemTest86+ which can test computer memory in a rather aggressive and comprehensive manner. Go to the MemTest86+ website (www.memtest.org) and then click the “Download (Pre-built & ISOs)” link. Download the latest “Pre-Compiled Bootable ISO (.zip)” to your computer. Once this has downloaded, extract the ZIP file and you should be presented with an ISO file. This is a CD image file which needs to be copied onto a CD. Once this has happened, you can then boot from the CD and conduct the memory test. However, you cannot simply copy the ISO file to a CD. Instead, you need to use a special utility that will extract the contents of the ISO file and then burn the contents onto the CD (as the ISO file is much like a ZIP archive – it contains an archive of files that will be burned onto the CD). To do this, download a program called ImgBurn (www.imgburn.com). This free utility will allow you to burn an ISO image onto a CD. It is fairly self-explanatory, so just follow the prompts in the ImgBurn program to burn the MemTest86+ ISO image to a blank CD.

Once you have a copy of MemTest86+ on CD, insert the CD into the CD drive on the computer and then restart. In theory, the computer should automatically boot from the CD and commence the memory testing. Be aware there is a whole series of tests which MemTest86+ executes and these can be seen at the top of the screen by the two progress indicators (one indicating the progress of the current test, and another indicating progress of the entire testing process). Any errors that occur during the test will immediately be displayed on screen. Don’t be surprised if you see a few errors, as most home computer memory will experience some errors for various reasons. You should be concerned though if you see a lot of errors appearing, as this would indicate that something is wrong with the memory in the computer. Should you see a lot of errors appear then you will need to take your computer back under warranty for a memory replacement. Also, be aware that MemTest86+ will never stop – it will continue testing until told otherwise. Once the first testing pass has completed, unless you have a burning desire to continue with another testing pass, simply restart the computer or turn off the computer to stop the testing (there is no more graceful way to stop the testing). Make sure that you remove the MemTest86+ CD from the drive before restarting, otherwise the next time the computer starts it will boot back off the CD again.

After running MemTest86+ if you find that the memory looks alright, we need to look elsewhere for the cause of the problem. Since the computer is new and you probably do not have much data on the computer at the moment, the best troubleshooting process would be to reinstall Windows from scratch. However, before completing this process I suggest that you make a list of all hardware devices in your computer and then download the latest drivers from the manufacturer’s website for each device. This means that when you are installing the device drivers, after reinstalling Windows, you have the latest drivers. This will allow us to eliminate bad or outdated drivers as the cause of the problem. Make sure that you download all the necessary drivers for all devices, including (but not limited to) network, graphics card, chipset, printer, sound card, etc. I suggest that you copy all the drivers to a USB thumb drive so they can easily be transferred to your new installation of Windows.

It should also be noted that the Windows reinstallation process will be destructive, so all data on your computer will be lost. Since the computer is relatively new, hopefully you do not have much data on the computer. However, any data that you wish to keep must be backed-up prior to commencing this procedure, otherwise it will be lost. I suggest the best method to backup the data is to a USB drive, as this is convenient and will also allow the quick and easy copying of the data back onto the computer once Windows has been reinstalled. After you have backed-up all data you need to keep, insert the Windows CD into the CD drive and restart the computer. The machine should boot from the Windows CD. When you are at the installation screen press ENTER to continue with the installation. It should detect that you already have a copy of Windows installed. You want to overwrite this copy, so make sure you select to install a fresh copy of Windows. Format the hard drive when prompted and then proceed with the Windows installation. Once Windows has finished installing, reinstall all the device drivers and check whether the problem continues.

Should you find that the computer produces a BSOD during the Windows installation then you definitely have some kind of hardware fault on the computer. Likewise, if the BSOD continues to appear once you have completed the fresh installation of Windows then it is highly likely there is some kind of hardware problem with the computer. In this scenario your best option is to contact the computer manufacturer for further advice, and potentially a replacement under warranty, as there is little else that you can do to fix this problem yourself.