Lock-ups, Fatal Errors, and The Blue Screen of Death

Self-DestructWindows 95/98 is more stable than Windows 3.1. In the 95/98 version, if an application "stops responding," you can close only that application rather than rebooting the whole system. In fact, I am often surprised at people who complain that they must reboot Windows two or three times a day. What are they doing with their computers? My old Windows 95 desktop runs half a dozen programs at once, and is a Web server and online catalog for a few thousand records. What am I doing right?

I have no idea.

What if you aren't as fortunate? What if you have frequent lock-ups? By "lock-up," I mean that your mouse won't move and your keyboard either doesn't respond, or after a couple of dozen useless key taps, it "bings" at you in pain. You may see the "blue screen of death," that informs you of a "fatal exception" or other incomprehensible error. Often, you can't use CTRL-ALT-Delete, and you have no choice but to hit either Reset or the power button.

Lesser versions of this problem have only one program--not the whole operating system--going belly-up. In that case, you can hit CTRL-ALT-Delete, get a list of programs that are running, and the offending software will have the phrase "not responding" next to it. Click once to highlight that program, then tap "End Task" to close it.Arghghgh!

Note when and what's running when it happens. Is it always the same program? Always the same action in the same program? If so, the first thing to do is reinstall the program. Make sure you have copies of your documents, then uninstall the program. Use the original installation disks or CD to reinstall, then reboot your computer.

If a "clean" installation doesn't work, contact the manufacturer of that program for help (or upgrade). This happened to me (and thousands of others, I'm sure) not long ago: I wanted to make Adobe Acrobat files from Microsoft Publisher 98 documents. Acrobat 3.1 choked up nearly every time. Adobe acknowledges the problem, and Acrobat 4.0 no longer has difficulties processing Publisher files.
Graphics accelerator If the problem seems random, and happens no matter what program is open or what you are doing, then the problem may be: 
  • a device driver conflict
  • a RAM problem
  • a hard drive problem
  • a video problem
Try the solution to the last problem first-- it's the simplest of the four and the most common. If there is a video problem, you can slow the video down a bit (you may not even notice the difference) to cure it. Here's how:

Go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, Display, and then Settings. On the Settings window, click Advanced, and then Performance. Turn the "Hardware Acceleration" slider down a few notches, and see if that stops the lock-ups.

The next easiest to cure is the hard drive problem (assuming it isn't a mechanical problem): run your defragmentation program and ScanDisk or a comparable utility. Make sure that the utility does a surface scan of the disk, too, just to make sure there aren't any physical defects.  And check that hard drive for free space: your machine may slow to a crawl or have frequent lock-ups if there is less than about 100MB free on the hard drive where Windows is installed (usually C:).
If neither of those solutions works, look for a device driver conflict. Go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, System, Device Manager. Next to each device, look for an exclamation point in a red circle. That means that device is trying to share memory with another device--a big no-no in the computer world. Keep in mind, though, that conflicts may exist, even if that sign does not show up. (Yes, it's confusing.)

If you see such the exclamation point next to a device, you can attempt to remove and reinstall that piece of hardware. Highlight the item and hit the "Remove" button. Restart the computer, which will detect the "new" hardware and install the proper driver. There is a good chance it will install it with the right memory address. But there are no guarantees, especially with older hardware.

If that doesn't work, you can try to manually change the memory settings (which I don't recommend, unless you know what you're doing). You can upgrade the hardware's drivers (most manufacturers have web sites where the latest drivers are available--free). Or you can replace the offending hardware, of course.

If there is no exclamation point telling you about the problem, but you think it is a device driver conflict, you can try removing and/or replacing devices one by one. (If lock-ups start within a day or so of installing a new modem or ethernet card, for instance, you might well suspect that new hardware as the culprit, whatever the Device Manager tells you.)

This is labor intensive and requires patience. Also, you may need to go "under the hood" for internal modems and ethernet cards. If you like tinkering, go ahead and try this. If you just want to get some work done, take it to a pro. But before you do, remember that this sort of random problem is a lot easier to diagnose if you keep notes of when and how the system crashes: what were you doing, which programs were running, and so on. If you have to take it to a local shop, you should also bring along your mouse, external modem, and other external devices to help diagnose a conflict (you can leave the monitor and printer, though).
RAM problems are the hardest for someone to diagnose without either spare RAM (to swap parts) or a diagnostic utility, like Checkit. When you boot your computer, it does check the RAM, but the problem can be a slight incompatibility with the motherboard or with Windows itself, and that self-check on boot will not show it.

If you have tried everything else to correct random lock-ups, you may have a problem with your RAM. If you feel comfortable buying spare memory modules and swapping them, give it a try. Otherwise, this is a good time to call in a professional. Be sure to list all the things that you've logged and all the cures that you tried.