What are some steps that you usually take? Are there any good ways of finding out what they mean etc.?
For example I have gotten these ones where it pretty much only says "IRQ less or equal to" (or something like that) which I must say, doesn't really tell me much! Another one I got more recently was something in the lines of "Some application changed some files it shouldn't have". And there were of course no information on what files, or what application...
What can you do?
You should definitely write down the hexadecimal stop code, it can often provide clues as to what actually went wrong. Googling it often produces a bunch of other people with the same problem and sometimes even fixes, though that is far less common. Usually you find out that the error can be caused by a multitude of things.
BSOD are usually caused by buggy drivers, so you should check a new driver has been installed or upgraded recently. It could happen silently when a new usb device is connected to the pc, for example.
You can find here some information on how to troubleshoot the Blue Screen of Death.
Firstly, ensure that minidumps are being taken.
There is free software called BlueScreenView which then allows you to delve into the minidump files and get an idea of exactly what files might have caused the blue screen to happen. I.e. whether it was a graphics driver, a sound driver, a program or whatever.
If you want to manually analyse the crash dump files using Microsoft's debugging tools, you will still need to follow the steps at the top to enable minidumps.
