Reasons Why Pcs Crash

[klusk 0]

You all must have been struck by the blue screen of death...specially the windows users....these may arise due to hardware as well as software problems....so...what could be the possible reasons of PC crashing...

Edited February 19, 2008 by klusk (see edit history)

[shadowx 0]

Well i guess the basic stuff of prevention is to use reputable software (doesnt mean you have to pay for it but software that is rather well known) keep a secure system, with AV's and firewall. If it's an old pc dont overload it by trying to do too much, also i its fairly old run the disk keeping tools every now and then. And if you want to avoid the blue screen of death forever get rid of windows!On a related note i got a blue screen a little while ago on my nice new laptop. I was running google earth with one of their little addon map things and it just blue screened. Bad times. I shall be avoiding google earth untill i can be bothered to do a fresh install. I expect it was the extension file that caused the error. I dont know the exact cause of the blue screen, i dont think microsoft do either, but general computer maintenance will hopefully reduce the risk.

[klusk 0]

here are a few reasons that i found out.....

The number one reason why Windows crashes is hardware conflict. Each hardware device communicates to other devices through an interrupt request channel (IRQ). These are supposed to be unique for each device.
For example, a printer usually connects internally on IRQ 7. The keyboard usually uses IRQ 1 and the floppy disk drive IRQ 6. Each device will try to hog a single IRQ for itself.

If there are a lot of devices, or if they are not installed properly, two of them may end up sharing the same IRQ number. When the user tries to use both devices at the same time, a crash can happen. To check if your computer has a hardware conflict i...
go to device manager.

Often if a device has a problem a yellow '!' appears next to its description in the Device Manager. Highlight Computer (in the Device Manager) and press Properties to see the IRQ numbers used by your computer. If the IRQ number appears twice, two devices may be using it.

Sometimes a device might share an IRQ with something described as 'IRQ holder for PCI steering'. This can be ignored. The best way to fix this problem is to remove the problem device and reinstall it.

Sometimes you may have to find more recent drivers on the internet to make the device function properly. If the device is a sound card, or a modem, it can often be fixed by moving it to a different slot on the motherboard .

Today there are 16 IRQs in a PC. It is easy to run out of them.
There are plans to increase the number of IRQs in future designs.

There are other reasons like bad ram and hard disk error or virus problem

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Anything you copy must be put in Quote tags.
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[Saint_Michael 3]

AHA!!! that is the second person that can confirm that google applications have some serious memory issues, me being the first. The last time I had a BSOD I had installed that google pack and my laptop kept on BSODing on me so I had to uninstall it. Well shadow is to something without getting to specific so I help fill in the gaps there, the first thing you want to do is defrag, and clean out your computer of programs and files you no longer use. The next thing I would do is reboot the computer go into the boot menu and select the diagnostic program and do a full run making note of any errors you might have and search for them later. This takes up to an hour to run but well worth it to see what you might have to do and stuff.Next it would be a good time to get a registry cleaner and clean that out as sometimes a clog registry can lead into problems, as for a good software I would go with Glary Utilities as it has some good modules to help clean up your computer.Sometimes a simple system restore will clear that BSOD, and usually you want to go a couple of weeks back before the BSOD start to happen.Also it would be wise to go into safe mode and then when your security suite to see if it picks up anything, and same with spyware and all that good stuff. When you go into safe mode your computer is literally cut off from the internet so you will be able to find something a lot better.Also depending on the type of user you are from simple user who checks email and thats it. to a user who beats the crap out of their computer with hardcore use. You might look into replacing parts and in this case its usually the Hard drive and the RAM that you would replace.Of course worse case scenario and sometimes it is recommending after 1-2 years of years of use and that is to completely re-install the operating system to really clean up the errors and erasing all that good stuff you accumulated over time.

[galexcd 0]

Well I'd have to go with the Microsoft programmers at fault here. I'm not really sure what else you want us to say other than that's what computers do. Computers are designed to do a broad number of tasks, and the broader they are designed the more flaws they could have. When is the last time that your microwave got a BSoD? Thats because It only is designed to have limited tasks and it is programmed very well to do those tasks.

Also: klusk, quote those posts fast before the admins catch you.
http://faq.programmerworld.net/pc/10-reaso-pcs-crash.html.

[dre 0]

what could be the possible reasons of PC crashing...

You could write a book about it and still not answer it, but the most common are: OS is crap, you can't program, and finally, your hardware doesn't like its neighbors.

[apacheNewbie 0]

You all must have been struck by the blue screen of death...specially the windows users....these may arise due to hardware as well as software problems....so...what could be the possible reasons of PC crashing...

Not enough memory
Overheating
Incompatible Driver

and .... Windows

Yes, windows can crash anytime without any reason

[SkyStormKuja 0]

This is all well and everything, IRQ's can cause crashes, and so can any 3rd party software that is installed on it. I guess I'm an old hater of Microsoft for various reasons, but I have been struggling with it for as long as I can remember. Starting with Windows 3.1, I've had little to no problems, even when running programs and 3rd party things (thought most of them were run in a DOS enviroment) But soon, with Win98, I began to loath Microsoft. Things never run smoothly. Granted, it is difficult to run the perfect system, but still.

Also, Windows XP is quite stable, but crashes easily. Luckily, the amounts of Blue Error Screens of Death I've encountered is a lot less. I believe that Windows Vista is really pushing it, and even Vista has crashed before my eyes. Completely.

So mostly, I think that rather than hardware, software is the main cause of systems that crash. Adware and spyware that sits in your RAM causes crashes as well.

Not enough memory

And not enough disk space. I was once in a form of 0bytes left on my main drive, and my windows crashed because it couldn't create the swapfile.

[saitunes 0]

Windows never crashes without reason... It crashes routinely... GOSH! get it right... naah, it's true. If its inconvenient, (e.g you've just written a whole assignment and its only autosaved which works when you don't need what was in the file, and you go to save it and then MS word crashes, then the whole system loses stability... and crashes...)Windows recently was giving me an error on the desktop computer (my laptop is a mac... and is WAY better than windows, not having to re-install the operating system ever is very very good (unlike windows) I will admit I do get a bit anal and clean out the caches every once-in-a-while which i can automate to run every whenever i want it to. (all built in to os X))back to the error i kept getting, when booting up it said 'boot volume unmountable' which to me says that it can't mount/open the hard drive that windows is on... and it suggests that you run it in safe mode. Can anyone see the flaw in that? I had to use a linux live CD to format the drive (luckily I've got 2 HDs, one for windows, and the other for the files) so i just formatted the drive and re-installed windows... for the 2nd time in two weeks! If it wasn't such a windows world (or the fact my bro has a tonne of games which are PC-Only that he plays reglarly) I would be happy to convert it to a linux system, for one i wouldn't have to periodically have to re-install it.

[SkyStormKuja 0]

If it wasn't such a windows world (or the fact my bro has a tonne of games which are PC-Only that he plays reglarly) I would be happy to convert it to a linux system, for one i wouldn't have to periodically have to re-install it.

You know, that is the exact same reason I use Windows still. Usually games don't work on Linux. And even if you add your windows emulator, or terminal-window thing, you're still stuck with it.

[bishoujo 0]

Yes, windows can crash anytime without any reason

sigh... absolutely agree with this. I swear my computer crashes very suddenly for no rhyme and reason. It's not as though I used it for too long to result in overheating, or that I'm running too many programs at the same time. I'd just be typing a regular word doc and suddenly the blue screen just appears. Thank goodness for auto recovery. But all the same, it's bad for my heart.

[klusk 0]

fine.....here we all agree that windows crashes frequently ..i mean windows Xp...Does vista have the same problem...i haven't heard any such case from my friends as yet..but i just think Microsoft must have done something to avoid such system crashes...and it should reflect in VISTA atleast....

[MadDog 0]

A friend of mine bought a new machine with vista on it not long ago, and it was barely a week old before it crashed the first time. By crash I mean, in her case, freezing, or randomly rebooting. She only installed about 1/2 dozen, reputable, paid for programs, and even after being "repaired" under warranty, it did the same thing. Now Im loathe to blame vista, (as much as I dont like it), because it smacks to me of a hardware problem, maybe overheating or something, but the curious thing was after 3 odd months, a complete reformat, and clean install of Ubuntu, it never happened again. I never personally looked at the computer, so this is all word of mouth, but I can only assume that 1/ Vista was at fault or 2/ The service technician replaced the faulty hardware (finally on the 3'rd trip to the repair shop).

[Amiel 0]

Oh, last last last week, I've encountered a Blue Screen Of Death and that week, I've encountered it numerous times saying that the problem is Kernel_Inpage_Error but I dont about it. I've tried to search in the might Google but It didnt help me much. I bring my computer to my neighbor so hacn fix it. He reformat my computer and he said it to us that our computer has a virus. OWS!!!?Well, after 1 week, my computer encountered a Blue Screen of Death again with the same error again, so my Mother and I decided to go to our computer supplier. They told us that our computer is overheating. My goodness, I dont know if I would believe it or not. But well, he cleaned my computer and it's full of dusts. Wow....The Possible Symptoms that I suspect: 1. Whenever my DVD or CD Rom reboots, my PC froze and will freeze then I will reboot my PC and it will say, Boot Disk Failure over and over again.2. There is a tool problem which I dont knowor 3. My Computer is too old and I need to trash it now.... lolCheers,Amiel

[sanguinaryogre 0]

Its usually because of low hardware compatiablity with OS. So its really important when chosing hardware, we should use a mix up of good brands, furthmore time to time maintanance ia also necessary like disk defragmentation.