Windows – How to determine the cause of the blue screen of death error on Windows 7

bsodwindows 7

Every now and then I get a blue screen error (not necessarily on the same computer). It just seems to happen sometimes while booting. The system will then automatically attempt a reboot living little time to read what is written on the blue screen. I click boot normally and Windows starts up just fine leaving me wondering what happened.

This did happen recently and this was the text of the error message after Windows rebooted normally (snapshot below).

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:   BlueScreen
  OS Version:   6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
  Locale ID:    1033

Additional information about the problem:
  BCCode:   116
  BCP1: FFFFFA800840B4E0
  BCP2: FFFFF880049B2378
  BCP3: 0000000000000000
  BCP4: 0000000000000002
  OS Version:   6_1_7601
  Service Pack: 1_0
  Product:  256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
  C:\Windows\Minidump\021214-25053-01.dmp
  C:\Users\Mike\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-193893-0.sysdata.xml

Windows blue screen error window after reboot

The .dmp file is unrecognized on my system. Opening it in Notepad just gives a bunch of gibberish. The .xml file is very long and I wouldn't know where to start looking to track down what happened. I clicked check for solution then it opened a loading window that said "checking for solution" then it closed.

How can I determine what happened to see if I need to take some action to prevent any further issues?

Best Answer

"It's not a true crash, in the sense that the Blue Screen was initiated only because the combination of video driver and video hardware was being unresponsive, and not because of any synchronous processing exception".

Since Vista, the "Timeout Detection and Recovery" (TDR) components of the OS video subsystem have been capable of doing some truly impressive things to try to recover from issues which would have caused earlier OS's like XP to crash.

As a last resort, the TDR subsystem sends the video driver a "please restart yourself now!" command and waits a few seconds. If there's no response, the OS concludes that the video driver/hardware combo has truly collapsed in a heap, and it fires off that stop 0x116 BSOD.

If playing with video driver versions hasn't helped, make sure the box is not overheating. Try removing a side panel and aiming a big mains fan straight at the motherboard and GPU. Run it like that for a few hours or days - long enough to ascertain whether cooler temperatures make a difference.

If so, it might be as simple as dust buildup and subsequently inadequate cooling.

I would download cpu-z and gpu-z (both free) and keep an eye on the video temps

For more information please read this blog http://captaindbg.com/bug-check-0x116-video_tdr_error-troubleshooting-tips/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff557263%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

You can also upload the DMP file to Skydrive or another file sharing service and put a link to it in your next post

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