Recovering from the Blue Screen Of Death
Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 10:32 am
Windows Me Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Ed
(659 messages posted)
BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH (BSOD)
A Blue Screen error does NOT usually indicate a fatal problem.
The Blue Screen of Death (also known as a STOP error) is the error
screen which is displayed by the Operating System on encountering
a system error during startup.
Although it's called the "screen of death", the system has been
halted to PREVENT damage occuring; a blue screen does *not* of
itself cause any damage.
It does NOT indicate a disk fault, as Windows was able to get
far enough along in the startup process to encounter a startup
error. The blue screen is in fact supplied by Windows.
In Windows 9x, a bluescreen is the main way the Operating System
has of notifying the user of the presence of an incompatible
device driver. Fixing this is only a minor problem.
Alternatively, the bluescreen might be caused by a hardware fault.
If so, it can be fixed by installing a repacement for the faulty
RAM, PSU or fan (all inexpensive items), as the case may be.
SAFE MODE
It may be possible to start Windows, by booting into Safe Mode.
To do this, restart the computer, and repeatedly press F5 or F8
or CTRL (it varies, depending on the make and model of computer)
at intervals of one second during the initial loading process.
This starts Windows without loading any device drivers (i.e. it
by-passes any faulty drivers present), and so enables you to use
Windows (rather than DOS) to fix the fault which is causing the
Blue Screen error and the inability to startup normally.
DIAGNOSING THE CAUSE
A bluescreen can be caused by (1) incompatible device drivers,
(2) bugs in the kernel of the Operating System, (3) poorly written
device drivers, or (4) faulty hardware.
In point of actual fact, most of these boil down to the presence of
faulty or incompatible .DLL or .VXD files. At bootup, Windows tries
to load all the installed .DLL and .VXD files; if it encounters one
that it can't load, the system is halted and the Blue Screen shown.
Review any recently installed software, which may have installed
incompatible driver files, i.e. files that were written for WinXP.
Try uninstalling the software in question; or manually remove the
files it added to the disk: i.e. physically delete those files
from the disk, and remove all references to those files from the
Windows Registry (or replace the Registry with a backup copy).
Deleting a Device Driver:
The usual cause of the Blue Screen is simply a wrongly installed
device driver. Typically it will be caused by a WinXP file being
installed in a Win9x system. Delete or rename the driver file in
SAFE MODE, using the procedure outlined below, to cure the fault.
A driver file is one with the file extension .DLL or .VXD; and
just deleting or renaming the file(s) causing the problem will
normally cure it.
The system can usually be restored to normal working by deleting
the faulty or incompatible file(s) from the hard disk (or renaming
the file(s), e.g. from .DLL to .DL_), without having to make any
changes in the Registry. This should be tried first.
It may mean spending a lot of time in a trial-and-error process
of renaming one file at a time (in the directories C:\WINDOWS and
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS), to establish
the identity of the faulty file(s).
A directory listing, at the DOS prompt, will list the files by date
(displaying all their creation dates). The *newest* files are the
ones to suspect first!
*** Directory Listing sorted by Date ***
DIR *.DLL /-W /P
DIR *.VXD /-W /P
It may be prudent to rename *all* files bearing the date that the
fault arose, in all *three* directories, then restart normally.
NB: It is poor tactics to delete a file physically, in case it turns
out to be the WRONG file. It is safer to merely rename it.
Replacing the Windows Registry:
If it's necessary to make a change in the Registry, one way to
do so is to restore a known good working backup of the Registry
(i.e. replace the whole Registry). This can only be done in DOS.
By default, Windows 98/ME keeps up to 5 backup copies of the
Registry in the hidden directory C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP
Every day, the first time Windows loads successfully a copy of
that valid Registry is saved there as a compressed .CAB file.
*** View details of the backups available ***
DIR C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP\*.CAB /P /-W /OGD
*** Routine to restore the Windows Registry ***
NB: Follow the on-screen instructions in SCANREG
SCANREG /RESTORE
NB: It is NOT desirable to backup the current registry first,
because that would overwrite (i.e. destroy) one of the
existing backups: perhaps the very one that's needed!
It is also possible to *manually* extract a Registry backup
from a .CAB file, and copy it to the correct locations.
*** Routine to manually extract Registry from .CAB file ***
NB: Rename the .CAB file below to match the actual name
EXTRACT C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP\RB001.CAB *.BAT /L C:\ /Y
EXTRACT C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP\RB001.CAB *.SYS /L C:\ /Y
EXTRACT C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP\RB001.CAB *.DAT /L C:\WINDOWS /Y
EXTRACT C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP\RB001.CAB *.INI /L C:\WINDOWS /Y
Blue Screen Error Number:
The Blue Screen usually displays a message and an error number,
like this:
number of error (parameter strings) name of error
All of this information is important in understanding the cause of
the fault. Dependant on the value of "number of error", all or some
of those parameters might contain information as to what went wrong.
Hardware Faults:
Hardware faults can include faulty RAM memory, power supply issues,
overheating of components (e.g. due to failure of the cooling fan
on the CPU, or another fan inside the computer), hardware running
beyond specification limits, or other hardware faults.
If you have just made some hardware changes inside the computer,
the most likely cause is an insufficiently tightened cable, an
unattached cable, or some other fault related to the changes made.
Perhaps you failed to correctly attach a device, or inadvertently
loosened another cable while you were working. Perhaps you failed
to seat the new PCI Card or RAM module firmly enough in its slot!
Obviously you will only encounter hardware running beyond its
specification if you have been over-clocking the CPU. If so,
undo the changes you made.
If the cause is NOT a faulty installation of the new hardware,
the next step is to disable or remove the newly installed hardware
(and any accompanying software), as doing so may be a complete cure.
In the case of a fault in existing hardware, to cure the BSOD error
fix the hardware fault: fit a replacement RAM memory module of the
same type, or a replacement Power Supply Unit (PSU) of the same type,
or a replacement for the faulty fan (as the case may be). Fan failure
will be obvious. If it is NOT a fan failure, suspect the RAM module
and the Power Supply Unit.
USB Disk can cause Blue Screen:
A bluescreen can also occur *during* a Windows session; e.g. if the
user ejects removable media (i.e. unplugs a USB device) while it is
being read from or written to, without following the correct
procedure.
NB: This commonly occurs with Microsoft Office, if the program is
not closed properly before unplugging a USB disk containing
dependent files.
Further Information:
For further information, read the following article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Screen_of_Death
Ed
On Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 6:48 pm, Kala wrote:
>This is kind of long. We have two computers in our house, so I'm writing this off
>of mine. My husband has an old gateway with Windows ME on it. We bought it from
a
>friend, so we don't own any of the disks for it. Anyway the computer was packed
with
>516 viruses, ranging from spyware, to adware. I installed a program that removed
>the problems from the computer, then restarted it at the prompt. (I did all this
>in regular mode) When I restarted it it went through the normal start up mode showing
>windows then gateway, but then it went to a black screen. After that it popped up
>with a blue screen that said that "An exception OE has occured at 0028:C163F082
in
>VxD. It said it may be possible to continue normally, press any key to attempt to
>continue, or press ctrl,atl,delete. Well it wouldn't do anything if you push the
>first one, or the otherone. At this point I have to manually shut the computer down
>improperly. It goes through the same process but pops up a black screen with 4 options
>one being normal, another safe mode, and so on. I wont let me do anything but safe
>mode, but when I go into it, it starts the help and support. For some reaseon I
can't
>get the internet to work, so I can't get help that way. It says I suppose to report
>an error message Num.2147143679. I can't get it out of safe mode, I can't get it
>to do anything. I have run the disk scan 10 times, but it says nothings wrong. Can
>someone please help me, I tried to be as thourough as possible. Sorry its so long.
>Another thing when the blue screen pops up it says "An exception OE has occured
at
>0028:C163F082 in VxD ---. This was called from 0028:C140A32A in VxD VTDI(01) + 000000BA.
>It may ba possible to continue normally" This is where it gives you the option of
>pushing a key, or pushing ctrl, alt, delete, but once you get here you can't get
>the computer to do anything.
>Thought I should explain that better.
- Written in response to:
- Really bad Window ME problem (Kala: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 6:48 pm)
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