For many Windows Operating System users, the most dreaded and worrisome “feature” of Microsoft Windows is the infamous “Blue Screen of Death” that tells you that Windows has crashed, without giving you the reason why it happened.

A stop error, commonly called the blue screen of death, blue screen, or BSoD, is an error screen displayed on a Windows computer system following a fatal system error. It indicates a system crash, in which the operating system has reached a condition where it can no longer operate safely.

Yes, the Blue Screen provides you with a cryptic code (stop code) that offers a subtle hint as to where to start looking, but that’s about all.

Windows 7 and Windows 8 are pretty stable than previous versions of Windows, but the occasional Blue Screen still shows up from time to time. A wonderful free utility called BlueScreenView sheds light on the cause of a system crash by scanning the mini-dump file that was created when the crash occurred and helping you track down the particular driver that caused the crash. 

BlueScreenView provides you with several specific pieces of valuable information regarding the crash that can help you identify the source of the problem. And since most ‘Blue Screen’ crashes are caused by bad drivers or driver conflicts, downloading and installing the latest version of the driver in question usually fixes the problem immediately.

Here are a couple of screenshots:

You can download BlueScreenView for free and read more about how it works by clicking here. The program doesn’t have to be installed. Simply unzip the zipped bluescreenview folder and double-click the BlueScreenView.exe file to run the software.