A blue screen of death as seen in Windows XP and Vista.
A malfunctioning public
payphone displaying the Blue Screen of Death.
The 'Blue Screen of Death' ('BSOD', 'bluescreen', or 'stop error') is an error screen displayed by certain
operating systems, most notably
Microsoft Windows, after encountering a critical system error. Bluescreens can be caused by poorly written
device drivers, faulty
memory, a corrupt
Registry, or incompatible
DLLs. Bluescreens have been present in all Windows-based operating systems since
Windows 3.1;
OS/2 and
MS-DOS suffered the
Black Screen of Death, and early builds of
Windows Vista displayed the Red Screen of Death after a
boot loader error.
Types of BSODs
Windows NT
In
Windows NT,
Windows 2000,
Windows XP,
Windows Server 2003 and
Windows Vista, the blue screen of death occurs when the
kernel or a driver running in
kernel mode encounters an error from which it cannot recover. This is usually caused by an illegal operation being performed. The only safe action the operating system can take in this situation is to restart the computer. As a result, data may be lost, as users are not given an opportunity to save data that has not yet been saved to the hard drive.
Blue screens are known as "Stop errors" in the
Windows Resource Kit documentation. They are referred to as "
bug checks" in the Windows
Software development kit and
Driver development kit documentation.
Windows 2000 (can also be configured to display debug info like the Windows NT example)
The text on the error screen contains the code of the error as well as its symbolic name (e.g. 0x0000001E, KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED) along with four error-dependent values in parentheses that are there to help software engineers with fixing the problem that occurred. Depending on the error code, it may display the address where the problem occurred, along with the driver which is loaded at that address. Under Windows NT and 2000, the second and third sections of the screen may contain information on all loaded drivers and a stack dump, respectively. The driver information is in three columns; the first lists the base address of the driver, the second lists the driver's creation date (as a
Unix timestamp), and the third lists the name of the driver.
[1]
By default, Windows will create a
memory dump file when a blue screen error occurs. Depending on the OS version, there may be several formats this can be saved in, ranging from a 64 KB "mini dump" to a "complete dump" which is effectively a copy of the entire contents of physical
RAM. The resulting memory dump file may be debugged later, using a kernel
debugger. A debugger is necessary to obtain a
stack trace, and may be required to ascertain the true cause of the problem; as the information onscreen is limited and thus possibly misleading, it may hide the true source of the error.
Microsoft Windows can also be configured to send live debugging information to a kernel debugger running on a separate
computer. (Windows XP also allows for kernel debugging from the machine that is running the OS.) If a blue screen error is encountered while a live kernel debugger is attached to the system, Windows will halt execution and cause the debugger to "break in", rather than displaying the BSOD. The debugger can then be used to examine the contents of memory and determine the source of the problem.
The Windows debugger is available as a free download from Microsoft.
[2]
Windows includes a feature that can be used to cause a blue screen manually. To enable it, the user must add a value to the
Windows registry. After that, a BSOD will appear when the user presses the SCROLL LOCK key twice while holding the right CTRL key.
[3] This feature is primarily useful for obtaining a memory dump of the computer while it is in a given state. As such, it is generally used to aid in troubleshooting system hangs.
By default, Windows XP is configured to save only a 64K minidump when it encounters a blue screen, and then to automatically reboot the computer. Because this process happens very quickly, the blue screen may be seen only for an instant or not at all. Users have sometimes noted this as a
random reboot rather than a traditional stop error, and are only aware of an issue after Windows reboots and displays a notification that it has recovered from a serious error.
A BSOD can also be caused by a critical boot loader error, where the operating system is unable to access the boot partition due to incorrect storage drivers or similar problems. The error code in this situation is STOP 0x0000007B (INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE). In such cases, there is no memory dump saved. Since the system is unable to boot from the hard drive in this situation, correction of the problem often requires booting from the Microsoft Windows CD. After booting to the CD, it may be possible to correct the problem by performing a repair install or by using the
Recovery Console (with
CHKDSK).
The color blue was chosen because there was a version of Windows NT for the DEC Alpha platform and there the console colors could not be changed in an easy way. For consistency reasons blue became the color for Stop errors on all platforms (alpha/i386/mips/ppc).
ReactOS
ReactOS, an attempt at creating a
free software/
open source implementation of a Windows NT-compatible
operating system, also features its own BSOD similar to the Windows NT/XP one.
Windows 9x/Me
The blue screen of death frequently occurs in Microsoft's home desktop operating systems
Windows 95,
98, and
Me. Here it is usually less serious, but much more common. In these operating systems, the BSOD is the main way for
virtual device drivers to report errors to the user. It is internally referred to by the name of "_VWIN32_FaultPopup". A Windows 9x/Me BSOD gives the user the option either to restart or continue. However, VxDs do not display BSODs frivolously — they usually indicate a problem which cannot be fixed without restarting the computer, and hence after a BSOD is displayed the system is usually unstable or unresponsive.
Two of the most common reasons for BSODs are:
★ Problems that occur with incompatible versions of
DLLs. This cause is sometimes referred to as
DLL hell. Windows loads these DLLs into memory when they are needed by application programs; if versions are changed, the next time an application loads the DLL it may be different from what the application expects. These incompatibilities increase over time as more new software is installed, and is one of the main reasons why a freshly-installed copy of Windows is more stable than an "old" one.
★ Faulty or poorly written device drivers, hardware incompatibilities, or damaged hardware may also cause a BSOD. If you have just installed a new piece of hardware, updated a driver, or installed an Operating System update shortly before you see the BSOD, be sure to investigate these causes also.
In Windows 95 and 98, a BSOD occurred when the system attempted to access the file "c:concon" on the hard drive. This was often inserted on websites to crash users' machines. Microsoft has released a patch for this.
[4]
The BSOD can appear if a user ejects a
removable medium while it is being read on 9x/ME. This is particularly common while using
Microsoft Office: if a user simply wants to view a document, he might eject a floppy disk before exiting the program. Since Microsoft Office always creates a temporary file in the same directory, it will trigger a BSOD upon exiting because it will attempt to delete the file on the disk that is no longer in the drive.
This type of blue screen is no longer seen in Windows NT, 2000, and XP. In the case of these less serious software errors, the program may still crash, but it will not take down the entire operating system with it due to better
memory management and decreased
legacy support. In these systems, the "true" BSOD is seen only in cases where the entire operating system crashes.
Windows CE
The simplest version of the blue screen occurs in
Windows CE except the versions for
Pocket PC. The blue screen in Windows CE 3.0 is similar to the one in Windows 95 and 98.
Windows for Workgroups
Windows for Workgroups' Blue Screen of Death is very similar to the Windows 9x BSoD.
Xbox
Although the Microsoft
Xbox usually shows a
Green Screen of Death when a critical error occurs, this model was seen showing a BSOD during the presentation of
Forza Motorsport at the
CeBIT computer fair in
Hannover in March
2005.
Display
By default, the display is white (
EGA color 0x0F;
HTML color #FFFFFF) lettering on a blue (EGA color 0x01; HTML color #0000AA) background, with information about current memory values and register values. For visually impaired users, Microsoft has added a utility that allows the user to change a setting in
SYSTEM.INI that controls the colors that the BSOD code uses to any of the 16 EGA colors. Doing so requires the edit or addition of the "MessageBackColor=X" and "MessageTextColor=X" lines to the [386enh] section of the SYSTEM.INI, where X is a hexadecimal number from 0 to F corresponding with a color in the EGA 16-color pallette.
Windows 95, 98 and Me use 80x25 text mode. The Windows NT BSOD uses 80x50 text mode. The screen resolution is 720x400. The XP BSOD uses the
Lucida Console font while the Vista BSOD uses the
Consolas font.
Red Screen of Death
Red screen of death
The 'Red Screen of Death' (abbreviated 'RSoD', sometimes called "Red Screen of Doom") is a nickname for the
error message which existed in some beta versions of
Microsoft's latest
operating system,
Windows Vista. It was dropped in Beta 1 (Build 5112) of Windows Vista for all errors except
boot loader errors. It can also be found (but rarely) in versions of Microsoft's
Windows 98 operating system. The red screen of death also appeared in builds of Codename "
Memphis".
It also sometimes refers to fatal errors in recent versions of
Lotus Notes. These errors are not full-screen like the
Microsoft red or blue screens of death, but rather are bright red boxes with black borders.
It can also be found on the Atari Jaguar System when a cartridge loading error occurs or an illegally copied cartridge is inserted. When this occurs, a jaguar roaring sound plays, the red Jaguar logo appears, and the background turns from black to red.
This video shows it.
It is also found in some of the more sophisticated flight simulators (such as those of
FlightSafety International). When a pilot crashes the aircraft, every screen in the cockpit turns red. This is usually accompanied by crashing sounds and a few violent kicks from the motion system.
Blue screens in the IT industry
System administrators often use "to bluescreen" or "to BSOD" as a verb, as in: "The server just bluescreened", "Oh, great, it's going to BSOD", or "Windows 2000 doesn't bluescreen as much as NT 4 did."
Embedded systems running Microsoft
Windows NT Embedded and
Windows XP Embedded have also been known to Bluescreen.
[5] Typical examples are Internet
payphones,
automatic teller machines and information displays.
On an unpatched
Windows 95 or
Windows NT 4.0 systems, it is possible for a BSOD to occur as a result of various internet attacks, like
WinNuke.
Understanding the Blue Screen of Death
Each BSOD usually displays a message such as FILE_SYSTEM as well as a number like 0x00000022.
The usual parameters displayed for the BSOD are the following:
'''number of error (parameter, parameter, parameter, parameter) name of error'''
Knowing all of the above information is important in understanding and determining the cause of the BSOD.
[6]
In windows XP usually only the first 2 numbers are significant in determining the problem. Or the first and last numbers depending on what the first number is.
Blue Screen of Death in popular culture
★ Perhaps the most famous BSoD event occurred when
Bill Gates was unveiling the then-new Windows 98 at
COMDEX on
April 20 1998. The demo PC crashed with a BSOD when his assistant (Chris Capossela, who is still working for Microsoft as Corporate VP in the Information Working business unit) connected a scanner to the PC. (
Video can be viewed here.) This event brought thunderous applause from the crowd and considerable embarrassment to Microsoft. Gates replied "''That must be why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet."''
★ The BSoD was immortalized in verse by Peter Rothman in his well-known entry for the
Salon.com haiku error message challenge:
:''Windows NT crashed. / I am the Blue Screen of Death. / No one hears your screams.''
★
★ ''See also:
Haiku Error Messages.''
★ As the BSoD is often subject to jokes and gags, it has been variously incorporated by design into a number of
screensavers, including:
★
★
SysInternals BSOD Screen saver
[7]
★
★
“The Other” BSoD screensaver, which faux-installs
Linux following a BSOD
★
★
Paramac's
Mac OS X-compatible
BSOD screensaver, whose program documentation states, “This screensaver will give your Mac functionality which was previously only available to Windows XP users.”
★
★
XScreenSaver, a screensaver included with several mainstream Linux distributions; the “BSOD” module for XScreenSaver simulates system crashes for several commonly used PC operating systems
★ Several online vendors sell blue
T-shirts that re-create the BSOD, and BSODs commonly appear in video games and webcomics.
★ When Intel unveiled that their processors would be available on Apple computers in 2005, a fake commercial, created from their actual television spot, was circulated around the Internet; it was the identical to the real commercial except it ended abruptly with a Blue Screen of Death.
Television
★ In a pseudo tribute to
Bill Gates and
Microsoft featured on the
Late Show with David Letterman, a brief clip with a serious tone is interrupted by an error
dialog box followed by a blue screen of death.
[8]
★ In the '' episode called ''Sleepless in Retroville'', when Jimmy says "I can't delete the pizza, the screen's frozen!" after his slumber party machine crashes, the blue screen of death can be seen on it.
★ On one of "
The Office" Webisodes, "You're Mean", Dwight's computer shows a blue screen of death.
[9]
★ In the series
My Parents are Aliens Sophie and Brian check the Galactic Guidebook about 'friendship' where towards the end of the file the computer says "File not found...Oh no...Blue Screen of Death". Later on the file is fixed and the BSOD disappears.
★ On
Adult Swim, one of the
bumps said that Adult Swim changed operating systems to avoid crashing on Windows (showing the BSOD). After announcing it was the "uncrashable Mac OS", the spinning wheel (see below) appeared on screen and caused the music to stutter and freeze, after which they said "F
★
★
★ it, we're switching to open source" before going out.
[1]
★ In the opening titles of
The IT Crowd, part of the animation depicts a
Linux kernel panicking during a
Fedora Core 4 installation. This is frequently mistaken for the
Windows blue screen of death.
Film
★ In the film
1408 Mike Enslin's laptop shows a BSOD when it gets wet.
★ In the movie '', Tai hits his dad's computer, resulting in a BSOD. The form of the BSoD implies that the computer is running
Windows NT 4.0.
Video games
★ In '', the robotic Black Hole CO
Jugger might say "blue screen of death" when initiating a Tag Attack/Dual Strike or CO Power.
★ One of the sanity effects of '' involves abruptly displaying a BSOD during a battle or tense scene. It appears for only a few seconds, before the screen flashes white, returning to the actual game.
★ In the ''
Halo 2'' multiplayer map Zanzibar, opening the gate from the control panel causes the panel to display a spoof blue screen, but instead of a regular BSOD it has some humorous sayings in it like, "If nothing works kick and scream at screen". This can also be found in the levels
Delta Halo and
High Charity.
★ In the game ''
Startopia'', workstations in the lab can sometimes be seen experiencing BSOD. (Causing the Turraken staff to bash the machines)
★ In the game ''
Far Cry'', a Windows 9x-style BSOD can be seen on various computer monitors.
★ In
Guilty Gear X2,
Robo-Ky experiences the Blue Screen of Death after his battle with
Baiken.
★ In ''
American McGee Presents Scrapland'', a human software salesman appears midway through the game, and tells you that "If I install our
software on your machine, it will 'destroy' your software." This is necessary to complete the game, and after he does, all indoor screens which used to display news now show a BSOD.
★ In ''
SWAT 4'' and '' almost every PC screen in the game shows a blue screen of death.
★ In the computer game '', in one of the "Nosferatu Warrens" levels, there is a computer you must activate to open a hatchway to the lowest Warrens levels. The screen of that computer shows a satirical variant of the blue screen of death.
★ In the video game ''
Prey'', in an early level, repeatedly triggering a forcefield control panel will result in the panel bluescreening, except the text is written in the Sphere's alien language. Reportedly, cheating so that the player gains the ability to translate alien text that early in the game reveals that the panel was running on "SphereOS", with the rest of the message being a standard blue screen, with the ever-present phrase "Bless the Mother" added to the end.
★ In the online game
Adventure Quest, the 'blue scroll of death' is displayed when an internet connection is broken.
★ In the video game , one of the summon beasts, the robot, EX-e-LD, screams "BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!!!!".
★ The achievement for defeating
MODOK in the
Xbox 360 version of '' is called "Blue Screen of Death".The reference only appears in the Xbox 360 version because the Xbox 360 is the only game console to support achievements.
★ In
Half Life 2, a BSOD can be seen on some computer terminals such as those in Kleiner's Lab.
★ In Half Life: Opposing Force if you use the computer found near the beginning of the game five times it will get a BSOD
★ In
Metal Gear Solid 2, a guard will walk between various computers, accessing data (and occasionally photos of female models). One of the screens he accesses is a BSOD.
★ In the Gamecube game
Geist, near the end of the game you enter a room filled with computers. All but two of them have a blue screen saying "the operating system on this machine has crashed."
Comics/Flash Animations
★ The webcomic
BSOD takes its name from the phenomenon.
★ In ''
Irregular Webcomic!'' the crew of the
sci fi ship have a computer that steals unused runtime from past computers using time travel. When asked "Is it safe?" Spanners can barely finish his reply before the Blue Screen of Death comes up.
★ In the comic ''
Bob And George'', on August 5, 2004, Bob tries to make a machine create "the most powerful robot master in existence," resulting in the machine bluescreening.
★ In the web cartoon ''
Weebl and Bob'', in episode "Upgrade 2", the computer in the background of the computer store displays the blue screen of death. It is best seen when zoomed in.
★ In the web cartoon ''
Homestar Runner'', during two 'Strong Bad Emails', Strong Bad's computer crashes, showing a blue screen with the heading "FLAGRANT SYSTEM ERROR".
[10][11]
★
★ In a "Puppet Stuff" toon called "Biz Cas Fri", the first of three with the same name, Strong Bad's computer crashes with a "''Flamboyant'' System Error".
[12]
★
★ Another one of the later Strong Bad Emails showed the BSoD when Strong Bad pressed certain keys such as Esc., Alt, and the Schwa key on his work computer in a combination at his log-off screen.
★
★ In another email, Homestar decides to take over for Strong Bad while he's away. He attempts to delete the day's email, but doesn't spell the word "DELETED" right. After many failed attempts, Homestar crashes the Compy 386. He tries to hide his mistake by posting a sticky note on the 386's screen. When Strong Bad comes back, he notices the sticky note and takes it off, only to find that the Compy has suffered from a flagrant system error.
★ In the comic ''
FoxTrot'', Jason Fox dresses as a Blue Screen of Death for
Halloween and, after terrifying the neighborhood, contemplates sending Microsoft some of his candy.
★ In the second volume of the manga ''Off
★ beat'', the character Paul's computer crashes, resulting in the blue screen of death.
★ Several flash animations parodying ''The Matrix'' series have utilized the Blue Screen of Death in a humorous take on experiencing technical difficulties in the Matrix.
★ In 2006, a short clip from the Star Trek episode '', of Data on the Enterprise bridge, was used as the basis for a popular
viral video, which superimposed a BSOD over the non-functioning helm control panel. The video can be found at YTMND.com.
★ In the Newgrounds animation ''There's Something About Halo'' the dropship in the beginning displays the Blue Screen of Death, proclaiming, "SUX2BU."
★ In episode 7 of '', while Kaiba is hacking the computer, a Blue Screen of Death appears, rather than the toon rabbit that was in the actual anime. Kaiba exclaims, "Ah! The Blue Screen of Death! My mortal enemy."
★ In one episode of "
Neurotically Yours," Foamy the squirrel was ranting about the problems with modern CDs, and mentioned that
copy protection has been known to damage computers. The cartoon then briefly and abruptly jumps to a fake BSOD.
★ On Ebolaworld.com's weekly update, the blue screen of death can be shown on the webisode "Stupid Windows"
Other Screens of Death
An instance of the background SVCHOST.EXE process was terminated, causing a countdown to a Windows restart.
★ On Windows XP and 2003, when a critical system process fails unexpectedly, either terminated by the user or due to a system infection (virus), or a remote procedure failure, a System Shutdown dialog box appears, giving the user 30~60 seconds to save their work and prepare for a system restart. It is not possible for users to cancel the shutdown via the dialog, although it may be cancelled by other administration tools, such as issuing the command
shutdown /a (abort) to the system via the Run dialog box. It is also possible to quickly change the date and time settings to push the scheduled shutdown far into the future. Below the time remaining it explains the reason for the shutdown.
★
Xbox 360 gets the
Red Ring of Death
★ Another infamous crash screen is the black screen of death, known primarily to fans of
Nintendo. The black screen of death is a crash in the connection during Wi-Fi play, typically with the
Nintendo DS. The screens of the DS go completely black, and the system freezes up. The blue screen of death in '' is the only known counter Nintendo has developed; this prevents
Mr. Resetti from appearing when players restart their game.
★ In ''
Super Mario 64 DS'' if a player freezes the game and presses a combination of buttons, a blue screen will appear with debug information.
★ In '' and '', if a player crashes the game and a small colored bar appears in the top-left corner and presses a combination of buttons, a black screen will appear with debug information
★ On the
PlayStation Portable, when the "flash1:" directory becomes corrupted, it displays the "BSOD", prompting you to reset its system to the default factory settings. There is also a "RSoD", very rare, when the flash0: directory is corrupted. An error resulting in an RSoD which is fixable using Pandora. This usually only occurs when someone attempts to alter the
firmware on the PSP.
★ In the Sega RPG ''
Phantasy Star Online'' a lag issue or a loading problem (particularly in crowded areas) could lead to a "frozen screen of death," abbreviated FSOD. FSODs could cause the victim to lose some or all of their items or, in the worst cases, corrupt the memory card, erasing all of its data.
★ Blue Screen on a
Samsung Z150 mobile phone indicating: "Can't make blue screen due to memory crash. Please press
★ to download ramdump."
★ On some digital set-top boxes with displays, when the system has a critical failure, it resets itself and the display continuously flashes a [new] set of random numbers or numbers descending from '4321'(ex NTL) for ten minutes every second.On reset,the box wipes itself and then downloads the latest system software(ex NTL).The state of the set-top box is reset (except for PIN codes) and is left in the state when after technician sets it up.This is known as a DBDoD (Digibox Display of Death).
★ Early versions of
Amiga computers displayed
Guru Meditation errors when they crashed.
★ The Original
Nintendo (
NES) system is known for its Green Screen of Death. This occurs when unlicensed games are inserted, or the contact heads of the cartridge or slot are dirty or corroded.
★
★ BSoDs have also occurred on the NES at certain times such as rapidly pressing the Reset button after a cartridge has frozen.
★ In
Virtual Magic Kingdom, when the game fails to reach the starting screen, some players have complained about getting The Black Screen of Death
★ In rare cases, Windows XP may hang right before the logon screen is displayed, leading to an empty screen with a movable 'busy' mouse pointer. A screenshot may be found
here
★ The Turquoise Screen of Near Death is a gag phrase coined for Halo 2 online matchmaking. In games where there are large amounts of lag (which can be seen as a less serious kind of crash, in which the blue screen would be presented), Halo 2 will sometimes take players to a light blue screen to await better connection, this time out screen is where the phrase is commonly used, and many players that remain unannoyed by the lagging take the opertunity to point out The Turquoise Screen of Near Death with loud screaming.
★
Apple's Mac OS X displays an overlaid message upon a serious error or
kernel panic. The message reads "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the power button for several seconds or press the Restart button" and is common referred to as a greyed screen of death or GSOD. Screen-shots can often be found
on flickr, tagged GSOD.
Windows 1.0
While this is mostly a coincidence, a blue screen can occur if the
very first version of Windows fails during startup:
See also
★
Spinning wait cursor — A cursor in Mac OS X that commonly means an application is busy. Often referred to as the spinning beach ball of death, or Rainbow wheel of death, a reference to the blue screen of death.
★
Screen of Death — Similar critical errors on other version of Windows and other operating systems.
★
Kernel panic — A critical failure under
UNIX and
Unix-like operating systems.
★
Guru Meditation — Another type of error messages for
Amiga operating systems.
References
1. Microsoft Windows NT Workstation Resource Kit, Microsoft Corporation, , , Microsoft Press, , ISBN 1-57231-343-9
2. Debugging Tools for Windows - Overview
3. Windows feature allows a Memory.dmp file to be generated with the keyboard
4. Patch Available for "DOS Device in Path Name" Vulnerability
5. Microsoft Mirth
6. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/w2kmsgs/1117.asp
7. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Miscellaneous/BlueScreen.mspx
8. David Letterman pseudo tribute to Microsoft clip.
9. NBC, "The Office" Webisodes, "You're Mean"
10. Strong Bad Email #50 "50 emails"
11. Strong Bad Email #118 "virus"
12. Puppet Stuff: "Biz Cas Fri" #1
External links
★
Official Microsoft BlueScreen Screen Saver v3.2
★
Bill Gates gets the BSOD at the unveiling of Windows 98
★
MVP Mark Salloway's Windows XP Resource Center - Introduction to Stop Errors
★
Original report of RSoD from a Microsoft employee
★
BSOD upgrades to RSOD in Longhorn from Joi Ito
★
A BSOD emulator for UNIX (Posix) platforms
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