Icon Solutions - Troubleshooting Information

BSOD - Troubleshooting "Blue Screen of Death" 'STOP' Messages

The BSOD that randomly comes up... "STOP! Windows has been shutdown to protect your system..." errors are a little more informative than I remember in the Windows 95 and 98 versions. The messages will or won't indicate a particular piece of hardware or driver file that has caused the problem. Sometimes it can be a fault of some kind. In any event, the issue is drastic and needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Most of the time you can reboot and never see the error again. But, if you do see it again, you NEED TO ADDRESS IT!

James A. Eshelman appears to have a least an eleven year tenure of computer troubleshooting. Read his complete story. We want you to see his page on deciphering the "X" codes that appear in the BSOD screen so that you will be able to better troubleshoot your situation. Here's James A. Eshelman Read More...

Clearing System Memory and All Static Charge

Sometimes a Cold Boot is not enough! The procedure just doesn't get the job done. Sometimes you have to make the memory completely empty itself. To do so, you just simply shutdown the computer. When it's off, unplug the power cord from the electricity for 60-90 seconds.

This is what happens. With the power cord unplugged, the electric charge that's sustained within the motherboard goes away. The memory has no charge to hold its contents. So what ever may have been holding in memory, can't hold on anymore. The memory contents are dumped and can start fresh on the next boot-up. The motherboard also de-charges and allows for the devices to reset, such as video cards with onboard memory.