The Blue Screen of Death (also known as a stop error, bluescreen, Blue Screen of Doom or BSoD) is an error screen

displayed by some operating systems, most notably Microsoft Windows, after encountering a critical system error which can cause the system to shut down, to prevent damage. OS/2 and MS-DOS suffered the Black Screen of Death. Early builds of Windows Vista displayed the Red Screen of Death after a boot loader error. Contents [hide] 1 History 2 Format 3 Windows NT 3.1 Details 3.2 Windows 9x 4 Windows CE 5 Windows 3.1 6 PlayStation Portable 7 Similar screens 7.1 Xbox 7.2 Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard 7.3 Game Boy Advance 7.4 Nintendo DS 7.5 Wii 7.6 Apple IIgs 8 See also 9 References 10 External links History The term "Blue Screen of Death" originated during OS/2 pre-release development activities at Lattice Inc, the makers of an early Windows and OS/2 C compiler. During porting of Lattice's other tools, developers encountered the stop screen when null pointers were dereferenced either in application code or when unexpectedly passed into system API calls. During reviews of progress and feedback to IBM Austin, the developers described the stop screen as the Blue Screen of Death to denote the screen and the finality of the experience.[citation needed] BSoDs have been present in all Windows-based operating systems since Windows 3.1. (See History of Microsoft Windows) BSoDs can be caused by poorly written device drivers or malfunctioning hardware, such as faulty memory, power supply issues, overheating of components, or hardware running beyond its specification limits. In the Windows 9x era, incompatible DLLs or bugs in the operating system kernel could also cause BSoDs. Format Until Windows Server 2012, BSoDs showed white text (CGA color code: 0x0F; HTML color code: #FFFFFF) on a navy blue background (CGA color code: 0x01; HTML color code: #0000AA) 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 CGA colors.[citation needed] 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 CGA 16-color palette. Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 use a cerulean background instead. (HTML color code: #2067b2) Windows 95, 98 and Me BSoDs use 8025 text mode. BSoDs of Windows NT family use 8050 text mode on a 720400 screen. Windows XP BSoDs uses the Lucida Console font while the Vista BSoD uses the Consolas font. Windows Server 2012 uses Segoe UI and renders the BSoD at native resolution. Windows NT

A Blue Screen of Death as seen in Windows XP

ReactOS, an attempt at creating a free and open-source implementation of a Windows NT-compatible operating system, also features its own BSoD similar to the Windows NT/XP one In Windows NT family of operating systems, 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 and 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 fix 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 64kB "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 on-screen 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 (using regedit.exe). 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 64kB minidump when it encounters a blue screen, and to then 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. This happens only when the computer has a function called "Auto Restart" enabled, which can be disabled in the Control Panel which in turn shows the BSoDs. 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, a damaged file system 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). Blue was chosen because the console colors of DEC Alpha, a platform that runs a version of Windows NT, could not be changed easily.[4] For consistency reasons, blue became the colour for Stop errors on all platforms (alpha/i386/mips/ppc). Another famous instance of a BSoD was at the 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony. [5] Media reports that Windows XP was used for the ceremony rather than Windows Vista. [6] Another BSOD was displayed through the Beijing 2008's Water Cube projection system.[7]

Details Before Windows Server 2012, each BSoD displayed an error name in uppercase (e.g. APC_INDEX_MISMATCH), a hexadecimal error number (e.g. 0x00000001) and four parameters. The last two are shown together in the following format:[8] error code (parameter 1, parameter 2, parameter 3, parameter 4) error name Depending on the error number and its nature, all, some or even none of the parameters contain data pertaining to what went wrong, and/or where it happened. In addition, the error screens showed four paragraphs of general explanation and advice and may have included other technical data such the file name of the culprit and memory addresses. Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 have dropped all of the above in favor of a concise description and an error name. Technical data may be extracted from Windows Event Log. Windows 9x

Windows 9x 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 that cannot be fixed without restarting the computer, and hence after a BSoD is displayed the system is usually unstable or unresponsive. On the GUI-based members of the MS-DOS-Win95 stream of operating systems and reportedly OS/2, the most common BSoD is the 25x80 screen which is in fact the operating system's way of reporting an interrupt due to a processor exception; it is therefore a more serious form of the Illegal Operation GPF/IPF error boxes seen in a couple of forms on these operating systems. Indeed, the memory address of the error is given and the error type is a hexadecimal number from 00 to 11 (0 to 17 decimal) and is most commonly 0E (Page Fault) or 0D (General Protection Fault), with invalid opcode (06), division by zero (00), and stack fault (0C) being less common and Overflow (04) and the Double Fault (08) forming a third tier of more rare processor exception errors. Assembly language and graphics programmers may see some of the others on occasion but as a rule 0E and 0D are the fatal exceptions that may crop up in everyday use. The error codes are as follows: 00: Divide Fault 01: Corrupted operating system 02: Non-Maskable Interrupt 03: Hardware malfunction 04: Overflow Trap 05: Bounds Check Fault 06: Invalid Opcode Fault 07: Coprocessor Not Available Fault 08: Double Fault 09: Coprocessor Segment Overrun 10 (0Ah): Invalid Task State Segment Fault 11 (0Bh): Not Present Fault 12 (0Ch): Stack Fault 13 (0Dh): General Protection Fault 14 (0Eh): Page Fault 15 (0Fh): System board malfunction or corrupted 16 (10h): Coprocessor Error Fault 17 (11h): Alignment Check Fault Source: Intel 80486 manual, and Microsoft article at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=150314 Two of the most common reasons for BSoDs are: Problems that occur with incompatible versions of DLLs. 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. In Windows 95 and 98, a BSoD occurs when the system attempts 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.[9] The BSoD can appear if a user ejects removable media 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, they 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. Perhaps the most famous instance of a Windows 9x BSoD occurred during a presentation of a Windows 98 beta by Bill Gates 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, trying to demonstrate Windows 98's support for Plug and Play devices. This event brought thunderous applause from the crowd and Gates replied after a nervous pause: "That must be why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet."[10] Windows CE

Windows CE 5.0 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 3.1 Windows 3.1 was the first version of Windows to use the Blue Screen of Death. In Windows 3.1's 386 enhanced mode, the Blue Screen is also displayed when Control-Alt-Delete is pressed. In a beta version of Windows 3.1, the screen basically looked the same, but it used a black background instead of a blue one. PlayStation Portable The PlayStation Portable shows a Blue Screen of Death when the internal settings in flash1:\ become corrupted or are missing. The BSoD instructs that the PlayStation Portable will attempt to recreate the registry setting files. The BSoD is encountered often when downgrading a PlayStation Portable because of non-backward-compatible registry files. Under very rare conditions (usually as a result of firmware modifications), the system may be thrown into a loop in which the PSP will continue to restart and display the BSoD screen. The PlayStation Portable also has a red screen of death which can appear when portions of the internal flash0:\ are corrupted or missing. This is usually more fatal than the blue screen of death as there is no option to repair the problem since the missing operating system, unlike the user settings, cannot be restored without booting the PSP in recovery mode and flashing the flash0:\ Similar screens Xbox

An early development version of the Microsoft Xbox showing a blue critical stop error during a presentation of a racing game at the CeBIT in March 2005 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. Additionally the recalled Game Kakuto Chojin displays a BSOD as an error message when the disc is dirty.[citation needed] Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Leopard feature a blue screen but not that of death. Leopard's blue screen was part of a regular boot process in some situations. Some users, upgrading from Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and having installed Application Enhancer, experienced a similar experience to a blue screen of death: on booting, the screen remained blue for an indefinite period of time because Application Enhancer's framework was not compatible with the new handlers that Leopard included. However, Apple became aware of the problem and posted a solution.[11] Nevertheless, Leopard's blue screen was not meant to inform and/or describe an error as the blue screen is just a consequence of the regular boot process. In the new Finder sidebar, all Windows PCs connected to the same local network of a Mac running Leopard are shown with an icon representing a CRT monitor displaying the blue screen of death. [12] Game Boy Advance If a cartridge is removed from the console as it is still running, the screen will display a textless BSoD, or more commonly will just continue displaying a frozen image of the game as it was at the exact moment before it froze and continuing to play the sound made at said moment. Replacing the cartridge will not stop either occurrence; to stop it one must turn the power off, replace the cartridge and turn it back on. Most games will start off at the last save point. The same thing happens when playing a GBA game on the Nintendo DS. Nintendo DS Nintendo DS blue screen of death Nintendo DS Lite screen of death The Nintendo DS will give a textless single-color on both screens when the user removes a DS card or GBA card while on the Pictochat room selection menu. The color of the screens is based on the DS firmware versionversion 6 firmware, found on most DS machines is blue (blue LEDs on only), while the version 5 firmware, found on DS Lite consoles, is magenta (red and blue LEDs on only). Some DS machines have green screens of death when the user removes a DS card or GBA cards while on the Pictochat room selection menu. While playing Animal Crossing: Wild World during wireless communication, should the wireless connection be disrupted, a light blue screen will appear featuring the character Mr. Resetti looking grim, along with a text stating that the game has been discontinued and that all unsaved progress of the game will be lost. Corrupted data on Pokmon Diamond and Pearl will result in a blue error screen. Wii Wii has a so-called Green Screen of Death that does not arise during normal usage, but may appear after running buggy homebrew or other problematic unofficial software.[citation needed] Apple IIgs The Apple IIgs has a Blue Screen of Death with a "bouncing" Apple icon, which would appear whenever the IIgs crashed, or whenever the computer was started up with no disk inserted