Troubleshoot Windows Blue Screen of Death

The most frustrating experience while using Windows is the random restarts in case of any errors. It gets bad when we don’t even get any chance to see or verify whats wrong and troubleshoot Windows. Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) displays some information regarding the cause of these random reboots but since Windows is configured to restart automatically in case of a BSOD we can’t view the error message. Here’s a simple tip to disable automatic restart in case of a BSOD and help troubleshoot the error. This tip can be used for all versions of Windows XP and above.

Right-click on the Computer icon and choose Properties. You may also use the keyboard shortcut [Win key] + [Pause/Break] to access System Properties. Windows XP users will see the System Properties dialog box while Windows Vista and Windows 7 users will be taken to the System Properties screen. Windows XP users click on the Advanced tab, others click on Advanced system settings link as shown in the image above.

From here it should be same for all users. In the Advanced tab, click on the Settings button under “Startup and Recovery” as shown in the image above.
Now in the Startup and Recovery dialog box that comes up, just uncheck the option for Automatically restart under the System failure section as shown below.

Next time if Windows encounters any errors you will get a BSOD and you’ll be able to write down the error message for troubleshooting. Remember though that you’ll have to manually reboot the computer now if this happens.

For troubleshooting just note down the error written in ALL_CAPS with underscores, for example, in the above figure, the error mentioned is DRIVER_UNLOADED_WITHOUT_CANCELLING_PENDING_OPERATIONS. Use your favorite search engine and search with the error message and you will get tones of information for rectifying the error.