I've faced the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) a couple of times recently—once last week and then again last night. I'm looking for advice on how to prevent this from happening again. Also, what steps should I take to address and fix the issue? For context, I have an R7 9700X processor, an RTX 5070 graphics card, 32GB of RAM, an 850W power supply, a 180Hz 1440p monitor, and a 60Hz 1080p monitor. Just a heads up, I'm not very experienced with troubleshooting PCs; I mostly know how to assemble them, so please bear with me! 😄
3 Answers
It sounds like your system might be unstable. You really should stress test each component to pinpoint the issue. If this is a new build, unstable RAM is often the main problem, especially if you've enabled XMP/EXPO at too high a speed or used the wrong RAM slots. If you're unsure, you might consider turning off XMP to see if that helps.
Computers can be really tricky, and there could be thousands of potential issues at play. A good first step is to determine whether it's a hardware or software problem. You could switch to a different operating system temporarily to test it out. For instance, you could run Linux Mint off a USB drive to see if the problem persists. If it works fine with Linux, then you likely have something broken within Windows. If it's still acting up, try updating your BIOS, drivers, and consider uninstalling any recent updates.
It’s interesting how people rush to hardware diagnostics without waiting for the BSOD error code or checking the event viewer. There’s usually an error code on the BSOD screen—you should try to memorize it before it disappears. Then, check the logs in the event viewer around the time the crash occurred to get more insights.
Yeah, the screen goes straight to 100% and restarts so fast that I don’t get a chance to read it!
Got it! I’ll try disabling XMP for now and see what happens.