A server that recently received hardware upgrades has begun to experience random BSOD conditions. Which of the following are likely causes of the issue? (Choose two.)

A Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is a critical stop error in Windows, often triggered by hardware or driver faults. Following a hardware upgrade, issues with the new components are the most probable cause. Faulty memory (A) contains defective cells that can corrupt data, leading to system instability and random crashes. Similarly, incorrectly seated memory (C) results in a poor electrical connection, causing intermittent and unpredictable memory access errors that manifest as random BSODs. Both are common hardware-related failures directly linked to the scenario of a recent upgrade.

B. Data partition error: This would typically prevent the OS from booting or cause errors when accessing the specific partition, not cause random crashes during operation.
D. Incompatible disk speed: This would lead to performance issues or the disk not being recognized by the system, rather than intermittent critical system failures.
E. Uninitialized disk: An uninitialized disk is simply not available to the operating system for storage and would not be a source of random BSODs.
F. Overallocated memory: This is a resource management concept in virtualization that can cause performance degradation in guest VMs, not a hardware-level BSOD on the host.

1. Microsoft Corporation. (2023). Bug Check 0x1A: MEMORYMANAGEMENT. Microsoft Learn. In the "Cause" section

the documentation explicitly lists "Defective RAM (hardware)" as a primary cause for this common BSOD error. This directly supports option A.

2. Dell Inc. (2024). How to Diagnose and Resolve Common Memory Issues on a Dell Desktop PC. Dell Support Documentation

Article Number: 000132524. In the section "What are the common signs or symptoms of a bad memory module?"

the document lists "Blue Screen errors (BSODs)" as a primary symptom. Under "Troubleshooting

" it instructs to "Reseat the memory modules" and "Test the memory modules one at a time

" addressing both incorrectly seated (C) and faulty (A) memory.

3. Patterson

D. A.

& Hennessy

J. L. (2017). Computer Organization and Design RISC-V Edition: The Hardware Software Interface. Morgan Kaufmann. In discussions on memory systems and reliability (e.g.

Chapter 5

Section 5.5)

the text explains how memory hardware failures

including both permanent faults (faulty RAM) and transient faults (which can be caused by poor connections)

lead to data corruption and unpredictable system behavior

including system halts.