Blue Screen of Death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Blue Screen of Death (sometimes only 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 encounters 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). Physical memory dumps may occur. 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 complemented with a red screen of death, used for boot loader errors.

Contents 1 Types of BSODs 1.1 Windows NT 1.2 ReactOS 1.3 Windows 9x/Me 1.4 Windows CE 1.5 Windows for Workgroups 1.6 Xbox 2 Display 3 Red screen of death 4 Blue screens in the IT industry 5 Understanding the Blue Screen of Death 6 References to the Blue Screen of Death 6.1 Television 6.2 Video games 6.3 Comics/Flash Animations 7 Other Screens of Death 8 Windows 1.0 9 See also 10 References 11 External links

[edit] Types of BSODs

[edit] 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.

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 ^[2].

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 "minidump" 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.^[3]

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.^[4] 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).

[edit] 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 one.

[edit] Windows 9x/Me

The blue screen of death also occurs in Microsoft's home desktop operating systems Windows 95, 98, and Me. Here it is less serious, but 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.

The most common reason for BSODs is that problems 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.

In Windows 95 and 98, a BSOD occurred when the system attempted to access the file "c:\con\con" on the hard drive. This was often inserted on websites to crash users' machines. Microsoft has released a patch for this.^[5]

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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Windows for Workgroups

Windows for Workgroups' Blue Screen of Death is very similair to the Windows 9x BSoD.

[edit] 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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 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.

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 font Consolas.

[edit] 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. It can also be found (but rarely) in versions of Microsoft's Windows 98 operating system. There is no RSOD in the official (current) release of Windows Vista.^{[citation needed]}

The red screen of death appeared when boot loader errors occurred. Windows Vista continues to have blue screens for other types of errors.

The red screen of death 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.

The Red Screen of Death can also be found on the Atari Jaguar System when an error loading a cartridge occurs. When this occurs,a roaring sound and the red Jaguar logo appear, and the background turns from black to red. This video shows it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9VtZVvJHvU&

[edit] 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.^[6] 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.

[edit] 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.^[7]

[edit] References to the Blue Screen of Death

• Perhaps the most famous BSoD event occurred when Bill Gates was himself 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 - many believe he was fired) 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 only limited himself to say, "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.

This was then moved to the Haiku Error Messages page in the Laugh Along with GNU section of the GNU project's website.

• 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^[8]
  • “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.

• In the movie Digimon: The Movie, Tai hits his dad's computer, resulting in a BSOD.

• In a clip of 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. ^[9]

• 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.

• On one of "The Office" Webisodes, "You're Mean", Dwight's computer shows a blue screen of death. ^[10]

[edit] Television

• In the The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius 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.

• 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 cards 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 "**** this, we're going open source" before going out.

• In South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, a scene in the movie where some military officers hold a briefing, the holographic projector apparently crashes followed by the lecture-holder kicking its surface shouting "God damn Windows 98!". The general in charge then brings in Bill Gates, and shoots him in the face.

[edit] Video games

• In Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Black Hole CO Jugger speaks in very technical diction; "blue screen of death" is one of the sayings he might use when initiating a Tag Attack/Dual Strike or CO Power.

• One of the sanity effects of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem 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 SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate almost every PC screen in the game shows a blue screen of death.

• In the computer game Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, 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 Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2, 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 Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 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.

[edit] 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". ^[11][12]
• 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".^[13]

• A later Strong Bad Email showed a "Teal Screen of Near Death" (TSoND) when the Lappy 486 was being held hostage by Strong Bad's two former computers who threatened to ruin it with a horseshoe magnet.

• 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.

[edit] Other Screens 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 Animal Crossing: Wild World is the only known counter Nintendo has developed; this prevents Mr. Resetti from appearing when players restart their game.
• 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 is usually unfixable.
• 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 faliure, it resets itself and the display continuously flashes a [new] set 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.
• In VMK, when the game fails to reach the starting screen, some players have complained about getting The Black Screen of Death

[edit] Windows 1.0

While this is mostly a coincidence, a blue screen can occur if the very first version of Windows fails during startup:

Loading...

a second later

[edit] 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, a reference to the blue screen of death.
• Screen of Death — Similar critical errors on other version of Windows and other operating systems.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Miguel Carrasco's Blue Screen Of Death top 10.
• Official Microsoft BlueScreen Screen Saver v3.2
• Common Windows XP Error Messages and Fix
• A Webcomic named after the Blue Screen of Death
• Andy Mallett's legendary Gallery of Blue Screens and Open Source Tips
• Bill Gates gets the BSOD at the unveiling of Windows 98
• "Windows Server 2003 Troubleshooting Stop Errors" - microsoft.com
• Troubleshooting Windows STOP Messages
• MVP Mark Salloway's Windows XP Resource Center - Introduction to Stop Errors
• Bloopers bedevil Gates at CES - BSOD during Bill Gates' keynote address at the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (ZDNet, January 7, 2005)
• Original report of RSoD from a Microsoft employee
• BSOD upgrades to RSOD in Longhorn from Joi Ito
• The XScreenSaver collection (Linux / X Window, free) includes a "BSOD Screensaver" that simulates BSOD's from many historical computing platforms
• Bluescreen, enterpreneurship, sufism
• BSOD Gallery, including ATMs, Billboards, Slot machines and more
• Make a custom Windows 98 BSOD message
• How To Create a Real BSOD in Windows XP