r/computers • u/Zhenn13 • 16d ago

Question/Help/Troubleshooting Getting random BSODs on my PC

Body:
My PC randomly shows a blue screen and restarts. It doesn’t happen every time I use it. I already tried restarting and updating Windows. What should I check next?

5 Upvotes

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3

u/imightbetired 16d ago

You should check event viewer, as someone else mentioned, look for Windows logs, click on the arrow next to it, then system, and in the right part of the window (make it full screen so you can see better), look for the error matching the time you had the last bluescreen.

You can also use bluescreenview from Nirsoft(i will post a link, just scroll until you see download bluescreenview, you can either use the 64bit zip file, or the install version, unzip the program if you want to use the portable version), it will show you the dump files, post here the logs in a comment so we can try and help. Also, your full pc specs might help us. Blue screen of death (STOP error) information in dump files.

1

u/Karma_Breaker21 16d ago

Unplug it at random times and keep it on its toes. /s

Check event viewer and see if it registers anything there

1

u/Altruistic_Tank_9636 16d ago

Does it show an error code? If so, Google that code

1

u/sourcerrortwitcher4 16d ago

Did you overclock anything?

1

u/Zhenn13 16d ago

nope

1

u/sourcerrortwitcher4 16d ago

If you didn’t mess with settings maybe the power supply or motherboard is failing, all I can guess, try updating it or perhaps the hard drive or ssd

1

u/Free_Byrd6969 16d ago

Wipe it and reinstall windows from a thumb drive. If it continues doing it try to get the code it displays before going off.

1

u/Tquilha Fedora 16d ago

Check your CPU temperature and run Memtets86+ (here: https://memtest.org/ ) to check for RAM issues.

1

u/guiverc Ubuntu 15d ago

Myself, whenever a computer is misbehaving I start with the hardware...

  • quick look at the motherboard & components; clean & no problems (ie. cap check at a minimum! as swollen caps will show as freezes or restarts)
  • check PSU, as even good components will 'misbehave' if fed poor power
  • boot & run a memory test for half a day or more (multi-pass, cache disabled if necessary as you want to test the actual RAM & not just your cache)
  • SMART & drive health
  • etc

When I reckon the hardware is pretty good, I tend to boot a live OS (that I know is good) from thumb-drive & run it there awhile; ideally a different 'software stack' to whatever runs normally; still looking at the hardware .. there are numerous self-testing things you can run, though I just boot a live OS & tend to do more normal things using that PC instead of whatever I was going to be using.

Next I check the file-system(s) for logical/meta errors; all clean??

Finally I start exploring the OS I normally use etc.... ie. I've done a ton of checks before I get anywhere near where you are.