Windows Blue Screen of Death...why am I getting it?

I've done almost all of the tweaks in the "Tweaking XP for performance" guide found here:

forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=305223

(Add the http stuff to it. The forum won't let me post the linl)

EDIT #2:
Okay. I've confirmed that the service editing was the one that caused all the Blue Screens. Anyways, problem solved. It's running normal again

 

What is the exact error message you see on the blue screen ?
You could also try a system restore to roll back your tweaks. (if you haven't already turned off System restore and deleted all the restore points)

 

As mentioned, try undoing the tweaks, and then do them again, one by one, until you get the BSOD. Then you know which one it was.

 

paste the stop code into google...cha ching

 

Along those lines, this website might come in handy. :laugh:

 

Hmm. I would try to un-do some of these tweaks, but I don't know how to go back to the default values.

 

The BlackViper site has the necessary information with default settings, tweaked settings and more for both XP and Vista, 32&64 bit versions; linky
Cheers.

 

Oh, I was actually referring to some of the registry tweaks that I did. I activated all of the services again because I suspected it was one of them (but didn't have the time to do it last night), and I still get blue screens. Do you guys think it could be this tweak:

Don't have XP clear your paging file at shutdown.
For security reasons, you can have XP clear your paging file (pagefile.sys) of its contents whenever you shut down. Your paging file is used to store temporary files and data, but if extreme security isn't a high priority, you might not want to clear it. To shut down XP without clearing your paging file, run the Registry Editor (click Start > Run, then type regedit in the Run box) and go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
Change the value of ClearPageFileAtShutdown to 0. Close the Registry, and restart your computer. Whenever you turn off XP from now on, the paging file won't be cleared, and you should be able to shut down more quickly.

My machine kept running fine until I did this, but there things:
1. I love how fast it shuts down, before I would wait 2+ minutes shutting down. This cuts it down to 15 seconds.
2. It actually didn't give me a blue screen for awhile until I started restarting my computer a lot. Hmm.
3. I don't have the default value of it, so I can't change it back unless someone can fill me in. I turned off system restore a long time ago also.

UPDATE:
Blue screens come up frequently when I use restart, but not when I shut down then turn it back on.

 

You still didn’t tell us what the blue screen says. The error message/code has some meaning, and it might help figure out the problem.

 

Oops, sorry about that.

When I get another one I'll post what it says up here.

 

Any service pack with your XP? And what is your machine model?

cheers ...

 

Service Pack 3
Dell Vostro 1400

 

Hey, I have the same laptop. It is possible that your BSOD could be as a result of a certain combination of updates...

Anyways, about the registry tweak, I imagine the default is '1'. But I'll check on that.

Hmmm... this seems to indicate that the default is already '0'. Hmmm. At any rate, it's either '1' or '0', whichever it was not.

 

Well I had to change it before to 0, so I guess it was 1. Thanks

Anyways after a lot of testing, the BSoD was coming from the services. I stopped getting the BSoD's after I set all of my services back to default. Now...I don't know which services were causing it but I'm not sure if I feel like testing it more

 

Excellente! Just repeat the process if you want to tweak. :yes:

 

You can check the system log in Event Viewer, or the latest Minidumps to know the cause of the BSOD(s)....