Capturing Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) screen

Question

Possible Duplicate:
PC Blue Screens and then instantly reboots. How do I stop this or find the error later?

Sometimes I get a BSOD screen for a split second and I have no chance to see the cause of it. It also happens when I am not at the computer. The event log doesn't have enough information. Is there a way or tool that captures the screen when it happens so I can look at the cause later.

I already did a memory diagnostics test so that's not the problem.

Solution

All BSODs are stored on your computer. The freeware BlueScreenView not only recreates the BSOD display as-it-was, but also tries to analyze the dumps and find the guilty program/driver for you:

BlueScreenView scans all your minidump files created during 'blue screen of death' crashes, and displays the information about all crashes in one table. For each crash, BlueScreenView displays the minidump filename, the date/time of the crash, the basic crash information displayed in the blue screen (Bug Check Code and 4 parameters), and the details of the driver or module that possibly caused the crash (filename, product name, file description, and file version).
For each crash displayed in the upper pane, you can view the details of the device drivers loaded during the crash in the lower pane. BlueScreenView also mark the drivers that their addresses found in the crash stack, so you can easily locate the suspected drivers that possibly caused the crash.

Comments

[user33788]

thats what cell phone cams are for are they not?

[Tony_Henrich]

Sure. I will sit infront of the computer for hours holding a camera and when the BSOD shows up for a split second, I will be quick enough to capture it!!

[Joey]

@user: Good luck then afterwards trying to decipher what's written on the screen. In my experience cell phone cameras hardly have any optical qualities you might describe as "good".

[joeqwerty]

Why is it not safe to disable the automatic restart upon system failure? What's going to happen other than it will stop on the BSOD instead of rebooting?

[joeqwerty]

Not true. A BSOD is an unexpected event and therefore won't be logged. The event log will log the startup after the BSOD with an event that states that the previous system shutdown was unexpected. The best you could do would be to configure a memory dump in the advanced system options and analyze the dump file after the fact.

[Dunkstormen]

@joeqwerty: Only a very few BSODS depending on type and when they happen will not make it into the event log, though the computer needs to be set to write an event to the log.

[Joey]

@Tofystedeth: That's the default setting, so unless they fiddled with it I would assume it's still set.