First Blue Screen of Death on PC... Suggestions?

[ET44C4]

Just had a blue screen of death on my PC. I believe it had something to do with a "memory dump." I would like to know if I should possibly start backing up my personal and recreational files. Personal items I will back up tonight, but if there might be a threat of losing my files in the near future, I would like to start backing up game files such as all TS mods and the like.

Any suggestions as to what I should do? Space is limited on my external drive, and new files keep coming in every so often.

[buzz456]

Which OS are you running?

[ET44C4]

Which OS are you running?

Windows 7

[JohnS]

Usually the BSOD is associated with a corrupted piece of hardware. 9 times out of 10 you have a bad stick of RAM in your PC

[ET44C4]

Usually the BSOD is associated with a corrupted piece of hardware. 9 times out of 10 you have a bad stick of RAM in your PC

That is very useful information, thank you. I have been looking into getting two sticks of 8GB RAM because this thing only has 6GB. I haven't had much time to spend on upgrade my PC, but I will start researching a few things. I'm going to try and get a 2TB external drive as well.

Some more information to add as well is that I believe this has happened a few times already. I would come back from working and notice that the PC was off, and the same windows error messages appear.

[buzz456]

John is probably right on. The only other thing that sometimes causes shutdowns like that is heat. You might check to make sure a lot of dust hasn't accumulated or you have a fan that's gone out.

[ET44C4]

John is probably right on. The only other thing that sometimes causes shutdowns like that is heat. You might check to make sure a lot of dust hasn't accumulated or you have a fan that's gone out.

Thank you all for the very useful information! I feel the fans going, so hopefully I'm okay there. I will open it up and check the dust. I probably should clean it every so often.

[buzz456]

Yeah it's amazing how much accumulates over a period of time. We have a long haired dog so stuff plugging fans is a regular occurrence here.

[artimrj]

I have 5 cats who hang in my room when I am here. I have a Shark vacuum cleaner and it fills with fur when I do my weekly clean up. I pull a handful out of the PC at least once a month.

[ssbobz]

My pc at work gave me a bsod a few weeks ago and would not reboot until our IT guy had me remove and reset the memory sticks, it's weird that something that doesn't move can sometimes be fixed by unplugging/reinstalling.

[dejoh]

Along with my dog and 2 cats, here's my other pet.

1200px-Dust_bunnies.jpg

[ET44C4]

Goodness gracious! That's a lot of dust you guys put up with.

I checked the insides of my PC and cleaned out the dust that was inside. A lot collected behind one of the fans that was next to the memory sticks. Anyhow, I double checked all my fans and they are all working.

[suzukisk]

If the other suggestions don't work you may have some corrupted files on the hard drive. I do PC repairs and often this was the case. If you can boot to safe mode with command prompt you can type chkdsk c:/f. This will check for corrupted files. Usually this fixes the files and you can restart again normally.

[ET44C4]

If the other suggestions don't work you may have some corrupted files on the hard drive. I do PC repairs and often this was the case. If you can boot to safe mode with command prompt you can type chkdsk c:/f. This will check for corrupted files. Usually this fixes the files and you can restart again normally.

Thank you for the information! If the problem continues, I will certainly try that.