Determining cause of BSOD?

[LesC]

I have a pretty old PC which has been pretty reliable but I do intend to replace it soon. Whilst on Skype earlier today the monitor went blank & I got a blue screen error. Switched on PC again and it's been fine since.

The only odd behaviour I'd noticed of late was with Firefox appearing slow at times - when loading a new page on a new tab, parts of the previous screen would show through. I tried the 'refresh firefox' option which appeared to help somewhat. I've also noticed (I think) that the fan's been working more than usual.

So, is there any way after the event to work out waht the cause of the blue screen error might have been? Thanks

[kalniel]

Event viewer will contain the same information as the blue screen, the error might give some clues.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/foru...-event-viewer/

[LesC]

Thanks Only thing I can see in Event Viewer under 'system' is this error:

Log Name: System
Source: EventLog
Date: 23/04/2015 17:28:24
Event ID: 6008
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Les-PC
Description:
The previous system shutdown at 17:26:54 on ‎23/‎04/‎2015 was unexpected.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="EventLog" />
<EventID Qualifiers="32768">6008</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-04-23T16:28:24.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>260629</EventRecordID>
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Les-PC</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>17:26:54</Data>
<Data>‎23/‎04/‎2015</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>3306</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Binary>DF0704000400170011001A0036001E01DF0704000400170010001A0036001E01600900003C000000010000006009 000000000000B00400000100000000000000</Binary>
</EventData>
</Event>

[satrow]

Try attaching a zipped MSInfo32 log, Start > Run > MSInfo32 > hit Enter. Wait a while for it to fully populate, say 5 minutes, Save As > msinfo32.nfo.

[smargh]

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

[LesC]

Thanks folks, will give those a go. Wht I have worked out is that the cuase of the fan working overtime was due the CPU runnning at up to 100% at times due to a process 'Adobe CEF Helper' which is part of the Creative Cloud app. I've now disabled it from launching at boot up & will just manually check for updates. I wonder if the combination of this running along with Skype was the cause of the BSOD overloading the system?

[satrow]

Yes, on "a pretty old machine", any runaway process would cause a User process (Skype) to choke, the CPU would slow down in steps, trying to keep cool whilst still keeping the PC as productive as possible.

Good work figuring it out