The present invention relates to a method and system for efficiently identifying errant processes in a computer system using an operating system (OS) error recovery method that identifies if the error caused by the errant process can be recovered and, if so, can recover from the error. The method and system of the present invention operates after standard Error Correcting Code (ECC) and parity check bit methods and systems are unsuccessful in recovering from the error. In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, the method and system includes detecting an error during instruction execution, storing a physical address of an errant process that caused the error, and storing an execution instruction pointer (IP) in a processor including at least one critical memory structure to detect an error and a processor error processing logic hardware coupled to the at least one critical memory structure. The processor error processing logic hardware to store a physical address of an errant process that caused the error, store an execution instruction pointer (IP) in an interruption instruction pointer (IIP), determine a first virtual address from an operating system mapping table, determine a second virtual address from a translation look-aside buffer, and identify the errant process, if the physical address and the second virtual address match the physical address and the first virtual address.