How to Fix the 'Blue Screen of Death' on Windows XP

Works on XP Home and Pro

Has your computer ever gotten the "Blue Screen of Death"? OK, that name might be a bit over dramatic, but it has become very famous through the years of the Windows operating system. One day everything is going fine, and you're your pounding away on the keyboard when it happens. Your screen disappears and a blue one pops up in its place with a cryptic message saying windows has encounter an error and must shut down. Then it gives a lot of numbers in the form of 'OOxOOOOOO (OOxOOOOOO) etc...).

For a lot of people, this means that the computer is either going to be replaced, or taken into a shop to be repaired. Well, I'm writing this to give you another option! Fix-it-yourself to save money and a lot of time. Most computer repair places are so packed with computers to fix, that they will take about a week to get to yours. Then they will charge close to $100 to fix it!

For starters, I'll explain why your computer has gotten the Blue Screen. There are several reasons it could have shown itself, the most common is the installation of a driver or other program onto the computer. Several times when Windows updates itself automatically it will download certain drivers, and that could be the culprit (I never did like windows). Or say you just installed a camera or printer, the drivers on the disc that came with it might have done it. So if you have downloaded some piece of information that you know of, then either uninstall it, or do a system restore (I'll explain system restore in a later article). After that, if you still receive the Blue Screen, then the drivers might have corrupted the operating system itself. That means one of two things. We either have to 'repair' windows, or completely reinstall it. No matter which one, you should back up your information at this time. Put any pictures or programs or any other information you want to keep onto a disc, or flash drive, or some other storage device.