This problem has been happening recently. My PC will just automatically shut down onto a blue screen which displays this error:

"Technical Information:
***STOP:Ox0000008E (OxC0000005, Ox8056537F, OxF3F96C94, Ox00000000)"

Anybody know how to fix this error?

blue error screens on NT/2k/XP/2k3 usually means a hardware problem

And that hardware problem, more often than not, usually means faulty RAM or mismatched RAM modules. Do you have two or more modules installed which are different brands? If so, ytry using them one at a time, in RAM slot 1, to see if the machine runs stable.

More specific information on your problem would help:

- What exact version of Windows? Give us the hardware specs of computer as well; as the others have said, STOP errors are often hardware-related in some way.

- Is what you posted the full contents of the BSOD message? If the error mentions a file, tell us that file's name.

- When did the crashing start to occur? Had you made any hardware or software changes at about that time (think carefully...)?

Ok guys I'm not a PC genius (in fact I just got my PC a year ago) so some of these things you guys are mentioning are like another language to me.

"faulty RAM or mismatched RAM modules" ???

"Do you have two or more modules installed which are different brands?" I have no idea what these are or how to check them.

"What exact version of Windows?" Windows XP Home Edition
"Give us the hardware specs of computer as well" How do I find out my hardware specs?

"Is what you posted the full contents of the BSOD message?" Yes the other info about the error is just saying my "computer had a problem"...."contact system administrator"...those type of things.

"When did the crashing start to occur?" As I said, recently. I probably got this error about 3-5 times this month.

"Had you made any hardware or software changes at about that time?" All I can think of was when I updated my videocard driver which I think may be the problem.

Good call; STOP:0x8E errors can be caused by video-related issues.

You should try to "roll back" the driver to the previous version and see if that has any effect on the problem:

- Right-click on the My Computer icon on your desktop and choose "Properties" from the resulting popup menu.

- In the Properties window, click the Hardware tab and then click the "Device Manager" button.

- Click the "+" sign next to the "Display Adapters" entry in the hardware list to show your video card; write down the name of the card in case we need it later.

- Righ-click on card's name, choose Properties from the menu and then click the Driver tab.

- Click the "Roll back driver" button and follow the prompts from there.

By the way:

RAM means your computer's memory (RAM= Random Access Memory).

Memory comes on small separate cards (modules) that get plugged into sockets on your computer's motherboard (main circuit board). The memory chips on the cards can fail, and that will cause all sorts of Bad Things to happen. Over time, the modules can also physically work their way loose from their sockets, making for a bad electrical connection.

Additionally, there are different types of memory modules, and they're not all compatible with each other. This is what Catweazle was referring to in terms of "mismatched". If you haven't addded any memory to your computer since you bought it, a module mismatch won't be the problem.

Thx I'll do this, but I'll only know if this worked if I don't get an error which could be awhile, so if I do receive one, I'll start a new thread. Thx for everyone's replies.

OK- get back to us when you can...

DUDE!!!!!!!!! After I turned on my PC this morning the color was set to 4 bit and my screen resolution was 800 by 600 pixels, where it's normally 16 bit and 1152 by 5 hundred something pixels. I can't even change the settings, and as I'm typing this, my screen keeps flickering everytime I punch in a key. What happened???