Along a similar line, in my own experience, since around Windows 2000 (not ME) it's extremely rare to see a BSOD that isn't related to either bad hardware or drivers, more often than not hardware related to a driver than the driver itself.
Another subtlety is that the term 'driver' on Windows tends to be used for any loadable module that runs in kernel mode. So a driver often isn't actually related to running a particular piece of hardware. Rather, it's a piece of software that needs kernel-mode access to the system.
Two examples that demonstrate this point well:
- There are various tools out there that you can use to perform a live memory capture on a Windows system; not just doing a memory dump of a single process, but doing a live memory dump of the whole system without having to halt or reboot. I've used one of these and it works by loading a 'driver' component when it is run that does the memory capture from kernel-mode (it requires Admin elevation to run, obviously).
I don't remember if it was one off this list that I tried though).
Another example: A friend of mine had a system that would inexplicably BSOD if he left it running for a long while, unattended (especially overnight). We initially suspected perhaps a heating issue (it was a small Intel NUC). After setting up for full memory dumps and then analyzing them after a BSOD occurred using WinDbg, we actually found out that the BSOD was being caused by a kernel-mode component of the anti-virus suite that he had installed -- I think at the time it was BitDefender, but not sure. When he consulted the AV vendor support website, I believe it turned out to be a known issue with a fix.
On my own systems, by far the largest cause of BSODs (of the few that I've seen over the last couple of years) has been RAM going bad. These typically manifest as BSODs out of the blue that seem to come from different modules each time they happen, or they come from a module deep in the system that 'shouldn't' have crashes. My personal rule is, if I see one, be vigilant. If I see another one, reboot and run MemTest86.
