BSOD Occurrences Test

The blue screen of death (BSOD), also known as a stop error screen, blue screen error, fatal error or bugcheck is a critical error screen that can be displayed by Microsoft Windows operating systems (OSes). If and when a BSOD appears, it indicates that Microsoft Windows has encountered a very serious issue from which the system cannot recover on its own. The BSOD functionally renders an affected system non-operational until the issue that triggered the BSOD is resolved with some form of intervention by the user. The BSOD incident typically comes with no warning leading to loosing of all unsaved work.

The BSOD occurs due to various reasons for example, hardware failures, outdated or corrupted drivers, faulty/incompatible software, malware, operating system issues, etc. Administrators may want to track the BSOD occurrences so that they can easily detect the underlying issues in the target host and promptly resolve issues before it permanently renders the host to halt. This is where the BSOD Occurrences test helps!

This test reports the count of BSOD incidents that occurred on the target host. Detailed diagnostics reported by this test can help the administrators to rapidly identify and efficiently troubleshoot the issues that caused the BSOD.

Target of the test : A Windows System

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the Windows system being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters Description

Test Period

How often should the test be executed. This is set to 1 hr, by default.

Host

The host for which the test is to be configured.

BSOD File Location

When a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) occurs in Windows system, the system creates a memory dump file that captures the state of the host at the time of the crash in C:\Windows\Minidump folder, by default. This file helps administrators to track the BSOD incidents, analyze the causes and take remedial actions to rectify the issues that caused the BSOD incident. By default, this test reads the dump files in the mentioned location and reports the details at regular intervals. Therefore, this parameter is set to none, by fault. However, if the dump files are stored in different location on the system, you need to specify that location against this parameter. For example, C:\crashfiles.

BSOD File in Minutes

By default, this is set to 60 indicating that this test will monitor the dump files that are created in the last 60 minutes and report the metrics. However, you can override this settings if you want this test to monitor the dump files created in other time period.

DD Frequency

Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD frequency.

Detailed Diagnosis

To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option.

The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled:

  • The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability
  • Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.
Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Blue screen of death occurrences in the last hour

Indicates the number of Blue screen of death (BSOD) errors occurred during the last measurement period.

Number

The value of this measure should be 0. A non-zero value is a cause for concern.

The detailed diagnosis of this measure reveals the name of the dump file created when the BSOD occurred, the time stamp at which the crash occurred, the check code and string of the bug that caused the crash, the size of dump file, name of the system, etc.