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A machine check exception (MCE) is a hardware failure identified by a computer’s CPU during system checks. It triggers a shutdown message, such as the “kernel panic” message on Unix-based systems or the “blue screen of death” on Windows. MCEs can be caused by memory cache errors, RAM corruption, overheating, bad hardware installation, or software errors. They require a system restart and can be difficult to identify. The machine control architecture (MCA) reports the error to the operating system.
A machine check exception (MCE) is triggered when a computer’s central processing unit (CPU) identifies a computer hardware failure during system checks. Linux and Unix-based systems, including Apple® Mac computers, will report the error via a “kernel panic” message, often displayed directly on the console screen. Personal computers running one of the Microsoft Windows® operating systems will use the commonly known “blue screen of death” to display a shutdown message. A machine check exception requires a system restart and often acts to identify underlying hardware corruption or compatibility issues.
There are several issues that can trigger a computer check exception. The exception is when a specific hardware problem cannot be fully identified; this can make locating the source of the exception quite cumbersome. Computer hardware problems that can cause this type of problem include memory cache errors where information stored in the memory cache becomes corrupted, causing the computer to fail every time it is read, and random access memory (RAM) corruption in where data stored incorrectly in the system RAM can cause random errors.
On Unix-based systems, machine check exceptions are commonly caused by installing new hardware. The onset of these exceptions can often be traced back to the time of hardware installation to identify bad hardware. Bad RAM expansion modules can cause such exceptions at random times, which makes identifying the underlying problem more difficult. Damaged or incorrectly specified RAM expansion modules can also cause a computer check exception to occur on computers running Microsoft Windows® operating systems.
System overheating can cause machine control exceptions; this can happen due to an underpowered or faulty heat sink or fan, or through modifying the computer or overclocking the CPU to run at a faster speed than it was originally set to. More rarely, software errors can cause this type of problem. This usually results from writing corrupted data to a file system or via software instructions to read corrupted or misidentified blocks of memory.
A machine check exception message is often the result of a hardware failure or system architecture corruption where the computer failure cannot be more accurately identified. The machine control architecture (MCA) is the means by which computer errors are reported to the installed operating system. Computers running on certain processors may employ more advanced machine control architecture that can more specifically identify the cause of the problem.
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