Glossary - BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), the name commonly used by the

Microsoft Windows users and first found in Windows 1.0. Generally indicates the screen with error message saying that Windows is about top crash. It will process the unsaved data at the occurrence in a RAW file format called Dump file. BSOD The acronym of BSOD is Blue Screen of Death or Blue Screen of Doom. This techie is closely associated with the Windows operating system family. The BSOD is nothing but a blue screen displaying error messages and codes stating that the operating system is about to crash. The BSOD also indicates that the unsaved data, information and process are transformed and saved in a RAW format file due to unexpected crash in the operating system. This saving process will help the user to recover back their data in the mere future. History: On searching the source for this blue screen error, it is first sited by IBM developers in IBM OS/2. The early Windows uses compilers developed by IBM. In this way it slipped into the Windows family. And the first version of Windows to be developed with BSOD is Windows 1.0. The Windows 3.0 users stated this screen as Ghost screen in humor. The name is because, there is no chance of any repair process is possible to the Windows operating system any more after the BSOD at that time.

Later after the improvement of the computer hardware and operating systems, the BSOD which we are using now came into existence. Different members of Windows family use a wide variety of BSOD. Some differs by colors and some by error codes used in it. Apart from blue screen there are Red Screen of Death (RSOD) and Black Screen of Death (BSOD). Other Types: The RSOD is the type used Windows Vista operating system and that too, particularly in Beta versions of Vista. These RSOD was introduced with the intent to differentiate the boot time dump errors found before the loading of Windows Vista operating system. The Black Screen of Death is same as the BSOD. In order to avoid confusion the black screen of death is called Blsod or Ksod. This Blsod is found in Windows 3.x versions and some game consoles. This indicates that the error occurred while executing a DOS based network application. Functions of BSOD: The basic function of BSOD is to display the error code at an emergent situation. By default the Windows operating system will keep records and logs of all events in a hierarchical structure. The kernel process is the root or parent process for this hierarchy. The other processes are just child process. Incase if any of the kernel process is obstructed or if the requested root process resource is unavailable, there occurs a conflict among the processes

and the process that started the conflict is registered as source of the operating system crash and will be displayed in coded format to the user. The BSOD codes are named as STOP codes. This BSOD codes varies among the Windows family. For example the format of BSOD code used in Windows NT operating system is STOP: 0x0000008a 0x0000000000000000, 0x000007fbba710218) (0x0000000000000003, 0xfffffa800a1206f0,

The first part directly specifies the process for the error and the other things are additional information regarding the error. Later, the operating systems after Windows NT use only the single part error code. Also they dont provide any metadata about the error. Detailed cram on BSOD codes: Consider that error message of Windows NT, because on viewing it we can able to grasp BSOD codes of all other Windows versions too. STOP: 0x0000008a 0x0000000000000000, 0x000007fbba710218) (0x0000000000000008, 0xfffffa800a1206f0,

The first part is the actual error message for the OS crash

 The second part refers to the process modules that are loaded into memory previously by the kernel. The third part indicates modules that are ready to be loaded in the memory. The fourth one is the current status of the kernel debugger Windows versions after Windows NT will display only the first part alone. And it will be of the binary value ranging from 0x00000001 to 0x0000005F. The Kernel debugger and the memory dump were the only process that will be in execution at BSOD Apart from the error codes there are some messages also available that are displayed along with these codes. This error messages are separated by underscore instead of white spaces. The messages are KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR: It indicates that the requested kernel page is unreadable. NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM: Hard drive corruption BAD_POOL_HEADER: It shows that the OS is crashed because of recently installed programs or modified security settings UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP:

RAM device failure or use of two irrelevant SIMMs in PC. INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE: HDD failure or HDD interface failure REGISTRY_ERROR: OS Unable to read data from registry IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL: Unsupported device drivers.