What is the “Blue Screen of Death”?
The Blue Screen of Death (sometimes called “bluescreen”, “stop error” or just abbreviated as “BSOD”) is the popular name for the screen displayed by Microsoft’s Windows operating system when it cannot recover from, or is in danger of being unable to recover from, a system error (the Microsoft term is Stop error). There are two Windows error screens that are both referred to as the blue screen of death, with one (Windows NT 4/2000/XP/Vista) being significantly more serious than the other (Windows 9x). There are several causes of the blue screen popping up. It can be a poorly-written device driver, bad memory, damaged registry or usage of incompatible versions of DLLs (see more on the “Types of blue screens” section). The blue screen of death in one form or another has been present in all Windows operating systems since Windows version 3.1. It is the successor of the less well-known black screen of death that occurs in OS/2 as well as MS-DOS[1]. In early builds of Windows Vista it was co
The Blue Screen of Death signals a major problem with the computer, usually involving video or hard disk problems. Make a note of the message that you see on the screen. This is often useful when trying to solve the problem. Other problems that you may encounter are invalid page fault messages that will close the open program, possibly causing a loss of unsaved data. Save your data frequently. In either case, rebooting your computer will usually solve the problem temporarily. If it happens often, investigate the problem and solve it by reloading the corrupt files named in the message. Sometimes adding memory to the system will solve the invalid page fault messages. Check the web site for the company that made the program to see if they have a patch or fix for the program that you can download onto your computer.
The Blue Screen of Death is an infamous error screen most closely associated with Microsoft Windows. Some nerd humor sites collect famous examples of the Blue Screen of Death, such as error screens which pop up on the monitors which are meant to display arrival and departure information at airports. As a general rule, one does not like to sight the Blue Screen of Death in the wild, as it is an indicator of a critical system error. The most distinctive feature of the Blue Screen of Death is, as you might imagine, the blue background color used. Anyone who has seen a Blue Screen of Death can instantly conjure up the unforgettable glaring blue of the background, which offsets white lettering used to display information about what caused the system error which led to the Blue Screen of Death. This error only occurs when a computer is forced to shut itself down to protect itself from a critical error, and it is typically accompanied with data loss, unless the user happened to save right bef
