Diagnosing the roots of the Fatal Exception error, more commonly known as The Blue Screen of Death, is roughly akin to diagnosing the roots of a fever or a headache.

The causes can be many, not to mention puzzling. And tracking them down depends as much on skill as on luck.

The following are just a few of the possible reasons for the Blue Screen.

The most sinister explanation is that one of the memory modules has gone bad or that you have added memory that is incompatible with your computer.

But there are more likely reasons.

The source may be rooted in a driver, one of those small programs that acts as an intermediary between programs and the devices those programs will use.

Sometimes, a driver has gone bad.

Sometimes the driver is good, but it can't cope with the way your system is configured_ if, say, you have a CD player that does not get along with your video or sound card.

You risk the Fatal Exception errors if you install a new, state-of-the-art video graphics or sound card, then try to run older programs that are not compatible with it.

There is more.

Fatal Exception errors pop up when a program does not get along with a device or another program _ as was the case when some versions of Adobe Type Manager 3 showed clear signs of being allergic to STB video cards as well as Symantec's pcAnywhere.

The Blue Screen of Death may flash its hideous self to you if you have a program that does not like the chipset _ the collection of chips, which in addition to the central processing unit _ are needed to make the computer go.

The combination of McAfee VirusScan and the Tseng Labs ET6000 chipset spawned a legion of Fatal Exception errors.

There can even be very innocent reasons behind the Blue Screen. If you have an Iomega Zip Drive and your computer has an Intel motherboard using an AMI Bios, you will get Blue Screened if you take the cartridge out of the Zip Drive or if you start the computer without the cartridge in the drive.

You should check the Web site maintained by the manufacturers of any software that seems to bring out the Fatal Exception errors.

In the technical support section you may find discussions or alerts about problems the programs may be having if played in conjunction with certain CDs, sound cards or video cards.

You should also check for software patches written to make the software behaves better.

You should also visit the Web sites of your CD, sound card and video card vendors.

You may find updated drivers for your devices there, as well as possible workaround solutions that could prevent the Fatal Exception messages.

Some Microsoft Knowledge Base articles on the Fatal Exception can be found at:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;150314

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;302833

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;280068

You can also find more articles in the Knowledge Base by going to it and entering "Fatal Exception" as a search term.

The Knowledge Base URL:

http://support.microsoft.com/