For many years now the famous Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) has been the ultimate indication that something disastrous has happened to make your computer die, but how useful is the information in the BSoD and the respective crash dump file that Windows produces?
The best article I ever found explaining the BSoD in depth is here on the Microsoft website, however it’s quite technical and doesn’t discuss how to actually troubleshoot a problem. The crash dump file is just technical details of what was being held in the computer’s memory at the time of the crash, and this will include details on every driver and service that was loaded, and every piece of software that was running.
The most useful pieces of information are to be found on the BSoD itself and are highlighted on the screenshot below. These are the BSoD error name, the stop error code and the name of the driver or service that has failed (this last one might not always appear). Performing a search online for these in conjunction, and the long string codes after the main stop error can give much more information, can help considerably in diagnosing where the problem lies.
But is it even easier than this to diagnose a BSoD stop error? Commonly a BSoD will be caused by something that has recently changed, such as a Windows Update where a new hardware driver has been installed. Windows has to support completely limitless combinations of hardware and software and so, no matter how much testing Microsoft might put hardware drivers, and software patches through before releasing them on Windows Update, there’s never any guarantee that a particular driver, service update or patch won’t cause problems with your particular mix of hardware and software.
One of the things I highlight in my book Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out is the importance of working through a problem to figure out what’s new or what has changed on a computer system. If you don’t change anything then it’s extremely unlikely that a system that runs perfectly stably for weeks, months or even years will suddenly produce an error later on (unless a critical file has become corrupt after an event such as a sudden restart). So it’s very likely then that something new or changed will have cause the error, perhaps a graphics card driver as these are embedded deep within the Windows system.
There are ways around this, such as running a System Restore to roll back the system to before changes were made. You can then, for example, check Windows Update to see if it tried to install any drivers and if necessary, right-click on them to hide them completely. If the system is really unstable you can use Safe Mode or Windows Safe Boot mode to start the computer in a reduced functionality mode.
One other scenario however that can commonly trigger a BSoD is a computer’s fans becoming clogged with dust, especially for the processor and power supply. You should always clean (carefully!) the inside of your computer on a regular basis and clean out accumulated dust to make sure that the computer doesn’t overheat.
Armed with this information it shouldn’t be too difficult to diagnose a BSoD and repair the problem that has caused it. Whatever happens you can be sure that you will not be the first person ever to have encountered this problem, and usually you will find an article or forum post online where somebody is detailing exactly what the issue is. Failing that, a little bit of lateral thinking and diagnosis usually saves the day.
in the workspace area of your menu bar. You should see an option in the contextual menu that says “Reset” which will reset your workspace to the default panels.
on the right of the panel. They can further be condensed or expanded by clicking and dragging on the left side of the panels.
Mini Bridge: Adobe Bridge is an image file browsing program similar to Faststone, XnView, or Google Picasa. CS5 has integrated a smaller version of Bridge to allow more visual browsing of your images within your panels. This can be extremely helpful, although any of the aforementioned programs work just as well, if not better. Bridge tends to be a bit on the pokey side, and uses more resources than you might expect.
History: One of the most important features of Photoshop, History allows users multiple levels of undo, allowing you to reverse a long series of mistakes. This can allow you to edit photographs or images more naturalistically, experimenting with effects that may or may not come out correctly.
Color: A simple panel, color allows you to pick and edit your foreground and background colors without opening the color contextual menu.
to adjust options, and pick sliders from different color modes. If you are a beginner, you won’t be interested in this until you learn about color modes first.
Swatches: A good resource for beginners and professionals alike, swatches are a panel of saved colors.
Styles: As a panel of saved “Layer Effects,” styles can be an interesting way for beginners to start experimenting or veterans to save their most common layer effects for reuse.
to remove all layer effects.
Adjustments: The adjustment panel creates layers that change and filter your image dynamically. While you can apply Hue/Saturation, Contrast, or Levels to your photograph, it would be permanent. Adjustments creates new layers on top of your image, that can be adjusted inside this panel.
Masks: The masks palette is a method for blocking out parts of layers, reducing them to transparency. This is an elegant, non-beginner way to remove a background from a layer without using 
Layers: Layers are the hallmark feature of Photoshop, allowing users to create 2d images in multiple editable parts.
Channels: Digital images display colors in combinations of primary colors, each with values.
Paths: Another difficult area of Photoshop, 
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