Black screen of death
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The Black Screen of Death is a computer error screen displayed by many operating systems when the computer encounters an error. It is mainly displayed in older operating systems, such as Windows 3.1.
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[edit] Windows 3x
In Windows 3.1, the BSOD is displayed when a DOS application fails to execute. The entire screen would appear black, with a blinking cursor in the top left-hand corner. The only way to exit the screen would to perform a hard reboot. The black screen of death was later replaced with the Blue Screen of Death in later versions of WIndows 3x. The blue screen would appear when the OS encountered an error while booting. The Blue Screen of Death is also apparent in all later versions of windows, such as Windows XP.
[edit] OS/2
In OS/2, the black screen of death, or the "TRAP screen" occurs when the kernel encounters an error that it can't recover from. This is often displayed due to hardware overclocking, or a hardware malfunction. It can also be displayed due to a software error. OS/2 also displays the BSOD when a "hard error" occurs. This happens when an application crashes, or when a drive cannot be accessed due to no disk in the drive. The user can exit the screen by rebooting (pressing Control-Alt-Delete), or performing a memory dump (CTRL-ALT-NUMLOCK twice).
[edit] Windows
Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, and the official release of Windows Vista also display a Black Screen of Death when the operating system cannot boot. This is usually due to a missing file. Often times, the user must reinstall Windows. In early beta versions of Vista, the Red Screen of Death would appear in this case. With the official release of Vista, the RSOD was removed.
