It goes without saying that the appearance of blue screens of death either when Windows starts up, or in a running system, and even with the appearance of messages like “A problem has been detected and Windows ...”, makes any user wonder why this is happening and how to fix it failures, using the simplest methods for this. Unfortunately, it is far from always possible to immediately reveal the true cause of such a computer behavior. The fact is that the blue screen itself can only contain a description of the problem and a stop code without a clear explanation of why this happened, not to mention information about the problem device. It’s good if at the bottom of the screen there is a link to some driver file, by which you can immediately determine what caused the failure. But what if there are no such instructions? Let's try to understand the current situation and consider the most effective methods for their correction.
Causes of the blue screen ("A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer")
To begin, let's figure out what exactly means the appearance of this message. If you translate it, it turns out that a problem was detected in the system, and Windows stopped working to prevent damage to the computer. What is behind this is often very difficult to understand, however, all failures can be conditionally divided into hardware and software. Problems with the hardware (installed equipment) most often include malfunctions or breakdowns associated with the main components of the computer (hard drives, RAM, video cards, cooling systems, etc.).
With regard to software failures, most often the appearance of screens with the message “A problem has been ... and Windows ...” is caused by incorrect operation of device drivers (and by no means always graphic accelerators), some important services of the operating systems themselves, damage to system files and libraries, exposure to viruses, etc.
Checking the hardware of your computer
As a rule, most experts recommend starting troubleshooting with cleaning your computer from dust and clogging (this primarily applies to stationary system units, not laptops). Try to at least remove the dust with the most ordinary vacuum cleaner, setting the suction power to the lowest possible, otherwise you can damage some important components on the motherboard.
It’s good to look at the characteristics of the power supply and the installed cooling system. A blue screen with the notification “A problem has been detected ...” may just appear in the event of a shortage for some power components or overheating with inadequate cooling (most often such problems are observed with processors and graphics adapters). Power surges can also lead to equipment malfunctions.
Very often, the appearance of a blue screen, accompanied by the message "A problem has been detected and Windows ...", experts associate with violations in the memory.
You can check it with the standard Windows diagnostic tool (mdsched) or with the Memtest86 / 86 + utility, which can be written to removable media and loaded before the system starts.
No less common are problems with hard drives when they have too many bad or unstable sectors and errors, or they just started to fail, after serving their time.
How to determine the exact cause of the failure?
As mentioned above, if after the message "A problem has been detected and Windows ..." there is a link to some file, most often it is a failed driver, you can immediately fix the problem. But for cases when there is only a stop code, it is possible to determine the “culprit” of such system behavior by it.
The best option is to use the BlueScreenView program, in which you need to click the AppCrashView link, after which a detailed description of the problem will be issued.
To detect problems associated with equipment overheating, you should use utilities like AIDA64 (formerly Everest), CPU-Z, GPU-Z and the like, and you can reconfigure the cooling system by using the SpeedFan program.
What should I do if the message “A problem has been detected and ...” pops up constantly in a running system?
If the above applications are not at hand, it is advisable to remove the main components (memory sticks, sound and network cards, etc.) from the motherboard, and then check the system boot. By the way, such a technique makes it easy enough to identify non-working memory strips, if several are installed.
Software failures and how to fix them
Finally, we’ll look at some methods to get rid of the blue screen “A problem has been detected and Windows ...” by fixing software crashes. Very often they are associated with device drivers. If the user does not have automated programs for installing or updating control software (Driver Booster, SlimDrivers, DriverMax, DriverPack Solution), in the simplest case, you can try reinstalling the failed driver in the “Device Manager”.
In the case of the possible presence of an updated driver, which theoretically could cause the appearance of such a problem, you can immediately roll back.
It goes without saying that sometimes even the lack of free space in the system partition can provoke the appearance of such errors and failures. Just in case, clean the “C” drive, and so that the free space is 5-10% of its total size.
For hard drives, it is sometimes necessary to switch the SATA controller to IDE mode instead of AHCI in the BIOS / UEFI settings. In some cases, a full reset or firmware upgrade of primary systems also gives the result.
Finally, check the system for viruses using portable scanners or boot utilities, generally referred to as “Rescue Disk”, from which you can load the anti-virus interface instead of Windows and perform an in-depth scan, including hidden areas of the hard disk and RAM.
What if nothing helps?
If nothing works at all, boot from removable media, check the system files (sfc / scannow), restore or overwrite the boot entries using the Bootrec.exe toolkit with additional attributes, or, if possible, roll back the system to the previous state, which preceded by the appearance of such a failure.