Need help getting meaningful errors out of Windows 8.1

[AJerman]

Okay, I need some help because of Windows 8's stupid generic blue screens. Ever since I upgraded 8 to 8.1, I've been getting blue screens on boot. It does the stupid giant frowny face and says your computer had a problem then reboots. The next time it goes to automatic repair and gives me a screen saying my PC did not start correctly with restat or advanced buttons, and up until today I've pressed Restart there and it actually does restart to the desktop successfully. Because of this and because I rarely reboot my system, I have let it go for a while but I guess the power went out today and now it won't boot at all.

 

The frustrating part about it is how dumbed down and generic everything is. I have no idea WHAT the issue is because all I get is a giant frown face. I can blindly click around boot records and stuff, but last time I did I don't recall finding a fix and I didn't want to inadvertantly make it worse.

 

Has anyone else had this issue after upgrading to 8.1, or does anyone know how to find a more meaningful error message that can actually help diagnose the issue? I'm usually the one doing the fixing, but Windows 8 is just ridiculous.

 

Oh, I do get the spinner like it's trying to boot for a while before the error happens, so I tend to think it's not the actual boot record or anything like that but further into the boot up. Surely I can get it to tell me the actual issue somehow?

[zhangm Supervisor]

does anyone know how to find a more meaningful error message that can actually help diagnose the issue?

 

What is the error recorded in the event manager? This can be accessed from the Start screen by typing eventvwr.msc or via the right-click menu on the Start button.

[Max Norris]

Crash dumps can be useful too.

[zhangm Supervisor]

Crash dumps can be useful too.

 

Yep. You can also change the dump type, location, and adjust the behavior when a BSOD occurs:

 

Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced system settings (on the left) > Advanced > Startup and Recovery (settings). Others here have recommended WhoCrashed for analyzing the dump files.

[AJerman]

This is during boot up, I can't get to the event viewer until it boots. I probably should have looked there in the past when I was able to get it to eventually boot, but it's a little late for that now. I'll have to see if it's writing a crash dump to the disk that I can pull off onto another system to look at.

 

Unfortunately my work laptop that I'm on is Linux. I'll have to see if there's software to read windows crash dumps on Linux or I'll have to bring it to work to another machine.

 

Edit: Only dumps I see are from last December. Doesn't look like it's writing one. C:\Windows\minidump right? No memory.dmp in C:\Windows either.

 

Edit 2: I'll be damned, I could have sworn I tried Safe Mode before and it didn't boot still, but this time it did. Unfortunately, no immediate indication of the issue in the event logs, still looking for clues... No errors in event logs, no dumps, no boot logs written (until my safe mode boot)

[John.D]

There is or was an update that may show more info on a BSOD in Win8. I dont know if it'll work in 8.1 tho. You can try it if you can get into windows again

[AJerman]

Gah, now after I rebooted out of safe mode (to try to get to safe mode with networking to try that patch), it did it's usual one failed boot, then reboot and boot successfully. Unfortunately that patch won't install on 8.1. It's late and I just spent 12 hours at work, so I'm not going to push it and try to reboot and break it again right now. I'll save further diagnosis for a weekend. If anyone has seen anything similar, please let me know though and I'll come back to this soon.