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#31
We don't know what causes it - if we did, we'd be doing it over and over in order to get results that we can work with. Stressful usage is definitely one way to increase the frequency - but so is Driver Verifier (and it's more informative).
Most BSOD's are caused by 3rd party software/driver problems
The next most common cause is hardware
Then comes Windows problems
3rd party stuff:
We rule out 3rd party software/drivers by removing it. We manually scan for programs with known problems and ask you to remove them. If the software is needed, we rule it out by removing the current version from the computer and installing a fresh copy that's known to be compatible with the OS. FYI - malware falls into this category also - so anti-malware scans are a part of the diagnostics (but we let others fix malware problems - it's too specialized for us to do here).
Hardware:
We rule out some hardware issues by running diagnostics.
We rule out others by removing hardware or substituting known good hardware for the hardware that's questionable.
That leaves us with only a few pieces that aren't easy to remove/replace and/or are too expensive
Windows:
Windows problems are relatively easy - update Windows and run SFC.EXE /SCANNOW
If that's not enough, a clean install will put the system in a state where Windows most likely isn't the problem (so if the errors continue, Windows is ruled out).