The infamous Blue screen of death of Death is one of the worst stuff that can occur on a Windows computer because the computer needs to be restarted, possibly with some data loss, as some applications may not be able to save your valuable work.

Since many long-time Windows users certainly agree, BSODs aren't something which we have seen as frequently as in the days of Windows XP or Windows 7, and also the release of Windows 10 and Microsoft's concentrate on reliability turned them into nothing more than occasional errors that aren't so difficult to repair.

And yet, BSODs still happen every once in a whilst not only on Windows 10 preview builds (where they are actually called Green Screen of Death / GSOD) but additionally on stable versions of the operating-system.

Most users attempt to fix these issues by themselves, albeit in certain lucky cases, a BSOD is just a rare thing that requires no input around the user side. This may be an indication that the BSOD was caused by a third-party driver or app which has in the meantime been patched with fixes to solve the fatal crash.

Each BSOD comes with some diagnosis information that's supposed to help users determine the reason for the stop error and fix it when logging back to Windows. While there are lots of such messages that may be visible on a BSOD, the seven most common are the following:
CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED
SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
VIDEO_TDR_TIMEOUT_DETECTED
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION

In many from the cases, resolving a BSODs starts with determining once the crash occurred.

If you received the BSOD when using the device, you have to begin inspecting third-party software that may cause such an error. Security software, like antivirus products and firewalls, ought to be checked first, because they could block critical files or processes from running, consequently leading to a fatal crash.

Then, you have to uninstall drivers and remove any peripherals that might have triggered the BSOD.

On the other hand, if the BSOD happened after installing an update, the only way to go would be to uninstall that update.

Let's start with the CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED error. In this instance, the content that you see around the BSOD reveals that a critical system process died unexpectedly, therefore the operating system responded having a bug check. There are several processes that could cause such as BSOD, such as the following:
csrss.exe
wininit.exe
logonui.exe
smss.exe
services.exe
conhost.exe
winlogon.exe

When it comes to SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED, the reason for the mistake is a bit more hard to determine, because it signals that the system thread generated the best that the error handler did not catch. There are many codes that come with this error message, such as the following three:
0x80000002: STATUS_DATATYPE_MISALIGNMENT indicates an unaligned data reference was encountered.
0x80000003: STATUS_BREAKPOINT indicates a breakpoint or ASSERT was encountered when no kernel debugger was connected to the system.
0xC0000005: STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION indicates a memory access violation occurred.

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, on the other hand, is an error that's typically brought on by kernel mode device drivers using improper addresses and in most cases signal faulty hardware, a system service problem, or an antivirus error.

In case your system crashes with VIDEO_TDR_TIMEOUT_DETECTED, you can examine for newer drivers for that video card. This error suggests that the device encountered either a software or a graphics hardware problem.

Much like several other errors, PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA is usually triggered by faulty hardware, bad drivers, or antivirus software. However, a corrupted NTFS volume may also create the same error, so fundamental essentials first stuff you should check when attempting to fix it.

SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION is definitely an error that virtually speaks by itself, because it signals that executing a code had an exception. This time, you should check the drivers and remove hardware that's been added recently to your system.

And last but not least, it's DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION, an error that occurs due to bad drivers which didn't develop a task inside the allotted time frame. Obviously, you should search for driver updates, as this is usually the easiest fix for the bug.

As you can see, the same workarounds are recommended for most of these errors, however it pros can also check the System Sign in Event Viewer for additional information to be able to determine the reason for the problem or find out the driver causing the bug check.