Windows 10 Blue screen of death (BSOD) also known as stop error or system crash might appear when you are in the middle of something like watching a movie or working with any application while upgrading Windows 10 to the latest version when booting windows or simply working on your PC. And mostly Windows 10 Blue screen occurs whenever Windows detects a serious error (while booting or middle of work) it cannot recover from, and it shuts down or restarts itself to avoid any damage and give you a message, such as “Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. We’re just collecting some error info, and then we’ll restart for you.”
A problem with a quality or feature update, buggy driver, incompatible software, or hardware problems are the most common ones that cause windows 10 blue screen error. If you’re getting a blue screen on your PC, in this guide, we’ll help you to troubleshoot and quickly fix the issue on Windows 10.
How to fix blue screen of death windows 10
Whenever your system crashes and shows blue screen error the first thing we recommend to remove all external devices and restart your PC that probably fixes the problem if driver compatibility between the external device is causing the issue.
Update Windows 10
There are chances BSOD errors can be caused by issues with low-level software running in the Windows kernel. And it can be solved by installing the latest Windows updates that Microsoft regularly releases with various bug fixes and security improvements.
- Right-click on Windows 10 start menu and select settings,
- Go to Update & security than Windows update,
- Now click the Check for updates button to allow download and install latest windows updates from the Microsoft server.
- Once done restart your PC to apply these update,
- And most of the time installing the latest windows updates fix windows blue screen errors as well.
Check Outdated Drivers
As discussed before incorrectly installed or buggy drivers can lead to system crashes. If you’re randomly getting a Blue Screen of Death message, and you still have access to the desktop, then the problem could be caused by an old driver. And if the problem started after the recent windows 10 1909 upgrade then there are chances device drivers not compatible with the current windows 10 version and need to be updated.
Update device drivers
- Press Windows + R, type devmgmt.msc and click ok to open device manager,
- You’ll now see the list of all your hardware listed in Device Manager
- Here check if any device driver there with a yellow exclamation mark (that means the currently installed driver for this device is outdated, not compatible and you need to update or reinstall the driver.)
Let take the example of the display driver
- To update the display driver open device manager,
- Expend display then right-click on installed graphics driver and select update driver,
- Now select option search automatically for updated driver software and follow on-screen instructions,
- If a driver update is available, the wizard will automatically install it, if not, your driver is already up to date.
Reinstall driver compatible mode
Also, you can try reinstall driver compatible mode following steps well.
- Open device manager,
- Expend display driver, right-click current graphics driver select uninstall,
- Click yes to confirm remove the driver and restart your PC
- Now visit the device manufacturer website and download the latest driver for your PC.
Here are the official driver download links for the most common drivers used on Windows PCs:
- NVIDIA driver updates
- AMD driver updates
- Intel driver updates
- HP driver updates
- Dell driver updates
- Lenovo driver updates
Right-click on driver setup.exe select properties, Move to the compatibility tab, then checkmark on run this program in compatibility mode for and select Windows 7 or 8 from the drop-down menu. Click apply and ok then install the driver.
Check virus Malware infection
Again there is a chance virus Malware malicious code that digs deep into Windows and gets its hooks into the Windows kernel at a low level can cause system instability that crashes windows 10 with blue screen errors.
In such cases, we recommend performing a full system scan with the latest updated antivirus or antimalware application. That scans windows deeply and removes the malicious code that may cause system instability.
Fortunately, there are plenty of antivirus programs out there that are very good at getting rid of these threats. One perfect example of this statement is Bitdefender, rated the world’s Nr. 1 antivirus program.
Run system file checker
If Windows system files corrupted, missing you might notice the system freezes, not responding at startup or suddenly Windows restarts with blue screen error. Run the DISM restore health command with system file checker utility that repairs windows image and automatically restores corrupted system files with the correct one.
- Open the command prompt as administrator,
- First, run DISM restore health command : DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
- Once the scanning process completes run system file checker utility sfc /scannow
- Once 100% complete the scanning process close everything and restart your PC.
- That helps fix Windows 10 blue screen error if the system file corruption causing the issue.
Bad hard drive
Another cause of BSOD errors is having a bad hard drive means having your files written badly on the hard drive. If you encounter plenty of reading and writing errors when copying or installing new programs, or you frequently see errors marked as cyclic redundancy checks, then you should know that a BSOD error is imminent. And you need run check disk utility that helps fix disk drive errors.
- Open command prompt as administrator
- Type command chkdsk c: /f /r /x and hit the enter key
- Next type Y on the keyboard to schedule run check disk utility on the next start.
- Now close everything and restart your PC
Also, there is a chance the memory error causing the issue, Run the memory diagnostic tool that detects if memory error causing blue screen error.
Windows 10 Blue Screen at Startup
Now, what if computers frequently restart with blue screen error while booting windows? In such situations, you need to boot from installation media to perform advanced troubleshooting.
- Insert Windows 10 installation media and restart your Computer,
- Press Del key frequently to access biOs setup,
- Here from boot options change first boot from CD, DVD (Or removable device if you are using a bootable USB drive)
- Press F10 on the keyboard to save the changes and restart PC,
- Now when the Windows 10 installation screen opens skip the first one and click next
- Then click repair your computer (refer image below)
Next On the ‘Choose an option’ screen, click Troubleshoot Click ‘Advanced options
From here you can click startup repair that automatically detects and fix the problems that prevent windows start normally. If startup repair fails then click on startup settings, restart and press F4 to start windows safe mode and perform the above solutions.
Disable Fast startup
Windows 10 Fast startup feature designed to reduce the time it takes for the computer to boot up from being fully shut down. But few of windows users report, disable fast startup helps them fix the windows 10 blue screen error on their computer. Let’s try to disable the fast startup feature following steps and see if it work for you.
- Press Windows key + R, type powercfg.cpl and click ok,
- The power options window appears, here click on “Choose what the power buttons do” from the column on the left.
- Next click on click “Change settings that are currently unavailable”.
- Scroll down to “Shutdown settings” and uncheck the box for “Turn on fast startup”.
- Click the “Save changes” button to apply the changes.
Did these solutions fix Blue screen error or Blue Screen Of Death on Windows 10? Let us know on the comments below.
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