Friday, January 1, 2010

Making Windows 7 Blue Screen [How To]

The most difficult problem I’ve encountered with Windows 7 is making it Blue
Screen on me.  You’d think after so many different versions, Microsoft would’ve made it much easier
to crash your computer – but it seems like they’re doing just the contrary!  What do these fools
think they’re up to?

Either way, I’ve made my Windows 7 (RC) box Blue Screen on me twice
– so I’ll share with you how I did it.  Make sure to leave your own Blue Screen of Death stories in
the comments below.

BSoD #1 – ATI TV Wonder

My
first BSoD is brought to you by the rel="nofollow">ATI TV Wonder HD 600 USB PC TV Tuner, and yes – it is a very long name for a
product.  Aren’t you thankful I didn’t put “Diamond” in front of it?

Over all,
this was an excellent product that I’m VERY happy I purchased from woot.com at
a price far below its stock value.  It was pretty much plug-and-play (I didn’t run the CD at first
because, well, my Sony DVD drive has crapped out on my Laptop and will only read DVDs now.  What
the hell, Sony?)  What was interesting about this device (and ultimately lead to the BSoD) was that
Skype recognized it as a video source (read: Webcam) and decided I might want to use it.  I thought
that was fairly cool, but didn’t dabble any more into it (until later, right before my crash).  So,
while I had this thing plugged in and made Windows Media Center scan for channels, I decided “Well, I’m
bored – I wonder what happens if I open this thing up in Skype too?  I got my answer with some
weird looking static, and then a Blue Screen.  Congrats,  Navarr!  This was your
first ever Blue Screen with Windows 7 (RC even!).  And that was the last of that.

BSoD
#2 – rel="nofollow">Lexar 4GB ExpressCard SSD

This is another
small device I found for cheap on the internet, and purchased immediately because – well, it could be used
with the Windows 7 ReadyBoost and I wasn’t using my Express Card slot on my laptop – I didn’t have any use
for it. 

It normally works pretty well.  I’m not sure if the problem
I’ve been encountering is Windows, My Computer, the Card, or it simply becoming loose but every now and then
it will unmount and remount – so it may just be loose.

Either way, this happening over
and over again while the device was dedicated to ReadyBoost has, of course, damaged the file system. 
After doing this enough times, eventually my computer Blue Screened on me – once.  It hasn’t seemed
to happen again.  I’ve since repaired the file system and got it working again, but I’m not sure
how long it’ll stay.

Final

So those are
my BSoD Horror Stories for Windows 7.  Do you have any of your own?  Has Windows 7 ever
crashed for you?  Tell me all about it in the comments!

3 comments:

  1. [...] See the rest here: Navarr's Tech Side » Making Windows 7 Blue Screen [How
    To] [...]

    ReplyDelete
  2. i had a windows 7 starter machine and corrupt an SQL database I can't retrieve. The
    only thing I had done was added ready boot to use an sd card. Windows did say it wasn't acceptable but
    finally let me use it. I think this is what caused the crash. I'm going back to mac. I wanted a cheap
    windows laptop for on the move but mac osx is so much better. I just get frustrated constantly by windows.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well yes, Expensive High Powered PCs /are/ better than the lowest end Windows computers
    you can find.

    Well noted.

    Also, the sky is blue. And the grass is
    green.

    ReplyDelete