It may be your favorite color, but that nice shade of blue is the last thing you want to see coming up on your screen. Discover why blue screen errors happen and what you can do to keep them at bay.

The Whys and Hows of Blue Screen Errors

Having dialogue boxes pop up on your screen from time to time can be annoying but when blue screen errors suddenly creep up on your monitor, things can get a little scary.

Blue screen errors are commonly referred to as the Blue Screen of Death or BSOD. Telltale signs involve a dark blue screen going up with a message telling you that Windows encountered an error and technical information showing you a lot of zeros.

The Blue Screen of Death or blue screen errors is actually a protective feature of any version of Windows that forces both you and your computer to take a breather. Blue screen errors happen for a variety of reasons. While some people discover that simply shutting down the computer for a while then starting up again sometimes help solve the problem, there are times when blue screen errors seem to stick around regardless of the number of times you reboot.

Why Blue Screen Errors Happen

Aside from pounding your keyboards to pieces out of stress and frustration, blue screen errors can occur due to legitimate reasons.

• Bad Random Access Memory (RAM) is among the most common causes of blue screen errors. Even if you have the proper mix of applications in use and systems memory, blue screen errors can still happen once your system tries to access a bad memory spot.
• Software errors during operation can also cause blue screen errors. This can happen persistently or only under certain conditions.
• Improper mix of applications in use can lead to the different programs stepping on each other’s memory space and consequently confusing your system. As a result, blue screen errors appear as Windows’ preventive measure against chaos in your system.
• Blue screen errors can also be due to hardware errors. Hardware errors happen when a hardware device is removed while in use by Windows or if the device is not supported by your operating system or when the device is old and needs to be replaced. Windows don’t take kindly to overheating processors or dying hard drives and will gladly flash blue screen errors for these culprits.
• Faulty installation can also lead to blue screen errors. The installation of the Windows operating system is very critical and highly prone to hardware and disk errors.
• Corrupted system files that prevent the correct booting of your OS can cause blue screen errors to flash on your screen.

How to Prevent Blue Screen Errors

• Before you install any program, check the installation driver for errors. Make sure that your programs are installed correctly with no missing files.
• Make sure that your memory, particularly your RAM, is proportionate to the number of applications you’re installing and using simultaneously. If not, try to put in a bigger RAM or get new memory sticks to replace the old ones.

Get a registry cleaner to ensure that your system is free from invalid registry entries which may cause your applications and operating system to malfunction and cause you to have blue screen errors.