Comprehensive Bluescreen Troubleshooting Guide

Owned by Colin McNeil
Last updated: Oct 03, 2024 by Ashley Mattingly
2 min read

A blue screen, commonly referred to as The Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) is a semi-common crash relating to Windows computers. Bluescreen errors can stem from a variety of different causes, so multiple troubleshooting steps are required.

Faculty, students, and staff can troubleshoot bluescreen errors in their Windows computers.

System Diagnostics 

Most University machines have hardware diagnostics built into their firmware. To run this tool,

  1. Press the F12 key while the computer is first starting.

  2. Select Hardware Diagnostics. Errors with RAM or Hard Disk commonly show up here and are one of the leading causes of a BSOD.

Disk Corruption

Errors on the disk can often lead to BSOD. To check for this issue,

  1. Right-click the Start menu.

  2. Open Windows Powershell.

  3. In the blue window, type "chkdsk."

  4. Hit Enter. If any errors come up, you may need to restart the PC to fix them.

Windows Corruption

If you are experiencing BSOD, you may have some corrupt system files. If you are able to log in to your computer,

  1. Right-click the Start menu.

  2. Open Windows Powershell.

  3. Type sfc /scannow. 

  4. Press Enter. This scan usually takes around an hour and will fix corrupt files.

Alternatively, you can fix Windows corruption by re-installing Windows.

  • Re-image your computer.

  • Manually reinstall Windows using a Windows 10 boot image.

Drivers/Firmware

A less frequent but normal reason for bluescreen crashes is out-of-date/corrupt drivers. Finding up-to-date drivers can be a difficult process. The key drivers to look out for are Chipset, Ethernet, BIOS, Video, and IO (USB or thunderbolt). To find the most recent version of the drivers, visit your computer manufacturer's support website. For example, "Acer Predator 15 inch drivers" will usually return a download page for Acer drivers.

For University supported machines, contact ITS at techsupport@uconn.edu or (860) 486-4357 to have this process completed by an experienced technician.

Critical Process Died Since Updating to 1803

For some machines, disabling Aggressive Link Power Management in BIOS may resolve this issue.

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