What is BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH?

Question

Is it meant to be that my computer will die? What is the solution to control the BSOD?

Answer 1

The Blue Screen of Death (sometimes called "bluescreen", "stop error" or just abbreviated as "BSoD") is a popular name for the screen displayed by Microsoft's Windows operating system when it cannot recover from, or is in danger of being unable to recover from, a system 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) 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.

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. In early builds of Windows Vista it was complemented with a red screen of death, used for boot loader errors.

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 are 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.

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.

Answer 2

Blue Screen of Death (BSD) is when your computer has an error that it cannot recover from and it displays a blank, blue screen...

Then all you can do is power your computer off, wait a few seconds (10 seconds or longer seems to be the normal recommendation), and then power your computer back on...

At this point your computer will accuse you of shutting it down improperly and then it will attempt to clean up the mess that it made during the error status...

If you are lucky, you will only see the BSD about 5 or 6 times a day...

What most people see.. is the mouse freeze up and no kind of message saying their computer has frozen up so you don't know until you try to move the mouse pointer.. at least BSD lets you KNOW something is wrong while you are waiting!!...

Oh, and if you file reports with every error (if you don't make it all the way to BSD then it comes up with "not responding").. then you will eventually get a message telling you that you need to upgrade your version of the software that you are running.

Answer 3

The Blue Screen of Death is where you computer can no longer operate at that specific time. It stop due to several different reason. Its either the Operating System has a problem with one of its files or a file within the system that needed to be processes but can't. Either the file is bad and needs to be repaired or it could simply mean you just need to restart and try again, otherwise it couldn't be processed because of other reasons like the Hardware inside the computer tower or notebook is failing. If you have a system with a bad memory card, your going to get the Blue Screen. If it happens often, one easy thing you can try is to reinstall the Operating System. If it comes back up, then more or likely is hardware related and that can be tricky to narrow down.

Answer 4

BSOD happens on a winNT/win2000/winXP computer when an application fails so dreadfully that it causes the operating system to fail as well... on win98 it just happens any time the hour has a second in it.

You get a blue screen with some error information on it and the computer stops. You may be able to use the information to see what fell over and why... but mostly you just need to reboot.

If a particular program keeps doing it then you need to replace the program with one that works properly! Also, drivers can do that so you may have to find uipdated drivers if you think they are causing it.

For comparison... I get BSOD about once a year on win2000 and about once an hour on win98 (which is why I stopped using win98). My father gets a BSOD once every time he shuts down on winXP with an old firewall application.

Answer 5

The Blue Screen of Death (sometimes 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 cannot recover from, or is in danger of being unable to recover from, 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).

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.

Answer 6

the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH

occurs when there's a fatal error / exception

no your computer will not die, but hangs up
and a simple restart will let windows correct itself

BSOD's are very rare, and hardly occur, keeping your computer up-to-date and virus free is probably one solution to controlling BSOD's

Answer 7

There are many reasons the BSOD shows up.
1)Installed last program wrong
2)Bad file
3)and so on

Answer 8

It's the screen you see when your computer crashes -- it's blue, with white print.

It doesn't necessarily mean that your computer is permanently dead. It may just be a bad driver.

Answer 9

When that happen to me it was my ram was going bad, the other time my video card was going dead! And no it does mean you have to reinstall xp. It should restore its self after you fix the ram. Some times you do have to, because windows detected to many changes.

Answer 10

Blue screen of death is when your PC freezes up, and does not respond. It means you have to Force Shut Down, and restart.