BSOD City

For some unearthly reason, over the past week I’ve been suffering from daily Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) issues on my Dell XPS 13 laptop. Essentially all of a sudden, my keyboard freezes up, I can move my mouse but clicks no longer have any effect, and then after about 10 – 15 seconds I get the BSOD.

Which stays on screen for about a second before the laptop reboots. I have no time at all to read the error code and description.

I’ve had three this morning already. On the last one, I was ready with my phone to take a photo of the BSOD so at least I could read it. No code, solely a description: “Kernel Code Inpage Error”.

A couple of minutes on Google, it seems it’s due to either a memory issue or a main drive SSD issue, probably heat related, although it could be a loose connector. Time to open up the laptop. I blew out all the dust (and there was quite a bit, slaps wrist), made sure all connectors were fully pushed in, and then ran Dell’s pre-boot diagnostics. No issues were found. I will note that I do have the laptop on a cooling pad, so wasn’t too sure about the “heat-realted” bit, until I saw the dust inside.

And luckily since that “IT Guy” work session, it’s been just fine. Fingers crossed.

Mind you, there was a moment of panic half an hour or so later: I turned my phone on and it showed a BSOD. I was like …. WHAT!!??!!?? Until I realized it was the photo I’d taken of my laptop’s BSOD. Hmm, OK then.

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