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What are the causes of a blue screen of death?

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a screensaver can – ratchet freak Sep 29 '12 at 17:52
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Well, it depends, have you read the wiki article, there explain what generally causes and the BSOD shows something like this STOP: 0x#### (0x####, 0x####, 0x####, 0x####) Error Name if you google the error you can know what does cause the screen – poz2k4444 Sep 29 '12 at 17:55
The OS detected a non recoverable problem: a bug in the kernel or a hardware fault. It the past if was caused mainly by bugs in the kernel, now it is probably bugs in device drivers, and sometimes hardware faults. In my experience it has always been device drivers, and kernel bugs. (So you have to write a letter to the device manufacturer, or operating system writer, as no one else has the freedom to fix it. – richard Sep 29 '12 at 22:01

closed as not a real question by techie007, Nifle, DragonLord, Dennis, Indrek Sep 29 '12 at 20:49

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2 Answers

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Usually the BSOD is caused by faulty hardware (most of the time, from experience) or a bad device driver.

If you read the BSOD it will usually give you the name of the device driver that triggered it and other debug information in the STOP line.

Microsoft provides a list of such codes: Bug Check Code Reference.

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A BSOD can be caused by a variety of things, from faulty hardware, to driver problems such as ones that could be caused from a system update, to software you install that loads improperly which could cause damage to your system, it more or less is your computers way of keeping itself from being damaged any further than it may already be and alerting you to what the problem is or giving you a idea of what the problem is.

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