PC Crash

[Johnny Doe]

Anyone know of a any software that can tell me whats causing my PC to crash?

[ChuckFickens]

That would be a nice idea...

Problem is that a pc crash generally means it stops working suddenly and unexpectedly so any software thats meant to tell you whats wrong is going to suddenly stop working just at the time it needs to be working

[ACtheTROLL]

there are logs and some utils ... but I don't have much faith in them unless you really know what to look for.
a snapshot of your machine only makes sense if you know

start by having a tidy round
run http://www.ccleaner.com/download
run chkdisk
do a full defrag
(probably won't do a bit of good - but it's worth a go)

look in the box - does it look like a dust bunny just exploded?

update all your drivers

one of the other's may have a better idea ... but it can be a nightmare
(rojash walks on water when it comes to tracking down impossible faults)

have a good think -
what EXACTLY is going on / happens
what are you doing when it goes
what did you do (install/uninstall prog, update drivers, use new usb mem, .... before it started
the list is endless - (I had a windows update that crashed a machine only if a particular mem stick was plugged in ...!
a website with some odd popup

but sometimes it's reasonably straight forward
you do A - machine crashes

if it's not ... backup ... crash and burn

[ACtheTROLL]

lol some type faster than others!!

[VHG]

Windows XP and Vista keep a log of all messages created by Windows and these can include details of hardware and software problems.

Go to the Control Panel, find Administrative Tools, then open Event Viewer.

Look for messages in the Appplication section and the System section.

There will be loads of information messages that you can probably ignore, look for Warning, Error or Critical messages.

Here is a picture of the XP Event viewer, the Vista one is slighlty different

http://support.gfi.com/manuals/en/esec3/images /eventViewer2.png

[VHG]

As has been stated, this can be caused by almost anything.

It may be hardware related, it may be software related, it may be because your computer is too hot or a component is loose.

If it has just started doing it then what have you changed?

Added new hardware? Installed a new program? Updated a driver? Moved the PC to a new place?

Can you tell us HOW it crashes?

There are all sorts of crashes, from the Windows Blue Screen of Death, to it freezing and needing a reboot, and so on.

So if you can exaplin WHAT you are doing just before it crashes (running a particular program) and also HOW it crashes?

Also HOW OFTEN does it do it, and does it only do it when you have been on the PC for a while?

[Johnny Doe]

Thanks for all you comments guys. Ran TuneUp Utilities the other day and that seemed to take care of it until about ten minutes ago when it crashed again. Don't remember doing anything in particular before all this started happening and it just occurs randomly which is pretty annoying. Gonna try that event viewer thing next i think. Once again, thanks for your help everyone, very much appreciated.

[Johnny Doe]

Sorry, the crashes happen at almost random times but it is Blue Screen Of Death and it comes up with a message IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and then some codes. Am running XP and will keep you up to date with any other details as they happen / i can remember them. Thanks again to everyone who's answered so far.