What you need: WinDbg software Time required: 30 minutes
When your computer crashes, and you find yourself looking at the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), it isn’t always obvious why – unless you know where to look. Windows helpfully keeps track of everything it was doing and which software was running on your computer at the time a crash occurred, logging it in a place from where it can be easily retrieved. It does this to help you diagnose the problem and fix it.
Once you know where these logs are, and how to interpret them, you can work out what went wrong, when and why the crash happened, and – if possible – to avoid a repeat in the future. Alternatively, if you don’t have the skills to do this yourself, you can share the logs with experts. All you need, as we explain here, is a small, free program to get started.
1 Look through processes in Event Viewer
All operating systems – whether running on a PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone – log every
