Screen of Death
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In many computer operating systems, a special type of error message will display onscreen when the system has experienced a fatal error. Computer users have dubbed these messages Screens of Death, as they typically result in unsaved work being lost and often indicate serious problems with the system's hardware or software.
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[edit] Blue
- See also: Blue Screen of Death
Although not the first of its type (see kernel panic), the Blue Screen of Death, introduced on Windows NT 3.1, is considered the canonical screen of death, and the best known use of the name.
[edit] Black
The black screen of death (BSoD), is either of two things: a failure mode of Microsoft Windows 3.x, or the screen displayed by the OS/2 operating system in the event of either a system error from which it cannot recover or a "hard" error in a program running in "full screen" mode (the former being a serious system failure but the latter being a less serious application failure).
The black screen of death has been present in all versions of OS/2.
[edit] Green
The Green Screen of Death (GSoD for short) is the name given to failure modes on the TiVo digital video recorder and Microsoft Xbox 360 console game system platforms.
[edit] Yellow
The Yellow Screen of Death is a term used to refer to error indicators in several World Wide Web software packages, most notably Mozilla, in which it indicates an XML parsing error, and ASP.NET, in which it indicates an exception.
[edit] White
The White Screen of Death (WSoD) affects some newer mobile phones leaving them with a blank white screen. It was first mentioned in user groups [1] [2] [3] in April 2005. In some cases unplugging the battery and restarting allowed the phone to reboot but some phones are left unusable. Most users found that WSoD was initiated by USB plug removal during mobile phone to computer transfer, and other users reported erratic functioning of the phone after the installation of games, applications and MP3s. WSoD has so far been observed on mobile phones in the USA and Europe. A reflash of firmware can resolve the problem of WSoD but users have reported the same bug on newer phones in the same product line.
On some Pocket PCs there is a WSoD. This occasionally happens and it is usually at random.
The White Screen of Death can also be used to describe a blaring white screen accompanied by an endless, loud beep that appeared at the end of many video tapes produced before the late 1990's.
[edit] Red
On some early versions of Windows Vista, some Red Screens of Death appeared. It can be found very rarely in Windows 98. Also, on a PlayStation Portable, a Red Screen of Death will occur when a very serious error occurs.
[edit] Kernel Panic
- See also: Kernel panic
A kernel panic is an unrecoverable system error in Unix-like environments. One critical early Unix design decision was to refuse to deal with certain kinds of error recovery such as hardware failure or bad kernel memory management, and simply lock up the system after displaying an error message.
[edit] Sad Mac
- See also: Sad Mac
The Sad Mac is a failure screen on Old World ROM Macintosh systems that indicates failure on startup, usually a hardware problem. It is silent on early hardware, but on newer hardware is accompanied with a sound effect, most famously the Chimes of Death on Mac II-series hardware.
[edit] Bomb
- See also: Bomb (symbol)
The bomb symbol was used for both system and application failures on Atari's TOS operating system, and more famously pre-OS X versions of the Mac OS to indicate an unrecoverable error. MacOS displayed it as a symbol in a box with a code to describe the error, while TOS displayed a row of bombs on a blank screen corresponding with the internal error code from the Motorola 68000 processor.
[edit] Guru Meditation
Guru Meditation is the name of the error that occurred on early versions of the Amiga home computers when they crashed. It is analogous to the "screens of death" in other operating systems.
When a Guru Meditation is displayed, the options are to reboot by pressing the left mouse button, or to invoke ROMWack by pressing the right mouse button. (ROMWack is a minimalist debugger built into the operating system which is accessible by connecting a 9600 bit/s terminal to the serial port).
