If your BSOD issues are being caused by a faulty or incompatible program that starts automatically when you boot Windows, thus crashing the system, there are a couple of easy ways to prevent this.

The best way is to use Sysinternal's 'autoruns' program to display all auto-running software on your computer. You can then pick through them and disable any potential culprits.

To do this download and run autoruns .

The program displays all software (including some essential Windows files) that runs automatically after Windows loads. By unchecking the boxes, you can disable specific programs and prevent them from loading. Note that there are several entries here you should not disable at any time, the two most important of which are userinit.exe and explorer.exe. Be very cautious with anything authored by Microsoft in this list (though it is possible for malicious startup programs like spyware and Trojan horse viruses to use the Microsoft label here also).

If you can't get access to autoruns, you can still use the built-in MSCONFIG utility to edit startup programs. Go to 'start\run' and type 'msconfig.' Choose the 'startup' tab.

While this utility's display is not as comprehensive as autoruns is, it has the advantage of not displaying any critical system files. Therefore, you can uncheck any and all items on this list without fear of messing up Windows even more.

Once you have used either utility to edit your startup programs, reboot normally into Windows.

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Page 1: Beginners Guides: Crash Recovery & The Blue Screen of Death
Page 2: Reading the Blue Screen Of Death
Page 3: Why Do BSOD's happen?
Page 4: Basic troubleshooting for all BSOD errors
Page 5: Section A: Troubleshooting Software & Driver stop messages
Page 6: Fixing device drivers
Page 8: Section B: Troubleshooting hardware and system file based BSODs
Page 9: Section C: Troubleshooting Windows XP install BSODs
Page 10: Section D: Troubleshooting Intermittent Blue Screens or Crashes