It’s the screen that we all dread. It nearly always means that there’s something seriously wrong with an operating system, and in many cases, fixing it can require drastic measures. Yes, of course. We’re talking about the blue screen of death!

One of the errors that you might encounter is marked as 0x00000000.

For example, you might receive an error like the one below:

STOP: 0x0000009C (0x00000004, 0x00000000, 0xb2000000, 0x00020151) "MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION"

There are several different causes for the 0x00000000 error. But in most cases where you receive it, your system will be unusable. In extreme situations, you might not have any access to the Windows operating system at all. The error often triggers a system restart, and can appear without warning. Needless to say, its one of the more frustrating problems out there! It should also be noted that the error is typically found on Windows XP.

The official Microsoft documentation suggests that the error arises when the Machine Check Exception detects an unrecoverable problem with the hardware on an XP OS. This is slightly ambiguous, so how do we know where the problem is coming from?

To get to a fix, we have to look at the hardware of the system.

It’s possible that you’re suffering from a memory partition problem. A re-format of the hard drive would be the solution in this situation. But it’s much more likely that there’s a problem with the system bus.

System bus errors are painstakingly tricky to fix and you’ll need to take the computer to a technician and cough up for the full repair treatment.

It’s also possible that you’re running off higher specifications than your machine can handle. Over-clocking of the processor is a notorious problem and it is associated with the blue screen 0x00000000 error. To handle the higher performance applications, you should consider an upgrade to the processor and memory.

In most cases, you’ll be well aware if your processor is being over-clocked with unrealistic expectations. Poor performance will be noticeable long before the errors begin to crop up.

Ensure that the system has sufficient ventilation and that the fan is powerful enough to cool the CPU. This is the cause of many a system failure, but many look beyond what can be treated as basic thermal management of the computer.

It’s also important to stay up to date with the latest anti-Virus protection. If you find yourself attacked by one of the malicious shell-targeting viruses that are in circulation, it can have a crippling effect on the system resources.

Download a system cleaning utility and run a thorough check for malicious files. Remove anything that looks suspicious and you should notice an improvement in performance – which can be noted from the Task Manager.

Ultimately, if Windows is refusing to start up, or if the 0x00000000 errors are too persistent to ignore – you should take your computer to the nearest (or cheapest) repair store and ask a qualified technician to troubleshoot the actual hardware components. It’s very likely that the problem is being caused by either damaged memory or insufficient system resources, both of which can be pricey to fix.