Blue screen of death

The Blue Screen of Death (BSoD), Blue screen error, Blue Screen, fatal error, or bugcheck, and officially known as a Stop error, is a critical error screen displayed by the Microsoft Windows and ReactOS operating systems in the event of a fatal system error. The Blue Screen of Death indicates a system crash, in which the operating system has reached a critical condition where it can no longer operate safely. Possible issues include hardware failure, an issue with or without a device driver, or unexpected termination of a crucial process or thread. TOC An early blue error screen first existed in the Beta Release of Windows 1.0; if Windows found a different DOS version than it expected, the error message "Incorrect DOS version" alongside other text messages detailing what check failed to pass would be appended to the boot screen before starting normally. In the final release (version 1.01), however, this screen prints out random characters after the "Incorrect DOS version" text as a result of a bug in the Windows logo code. This is not a crash screen, however; upon crashing, Windows 1.0 either locks up or exits to DOS. Windows 3.0 uses a text-mode screen for displaying important system messages, usually from digital device drivers in 386 Enhanced Mode or other situations where a program could not run. Windows 3.1 changed the color of this screen from black to blue. Windows 3.1 also displays a blue screen when the user presses the Ctrl+Alt+Delete key combination while no programs were unresponsive (the reverse is true for when there are unresponsive programs). As with prior versions, Windows 3.x exits to DOS if an error condition is severe enough. The first Blue Screen of Death appeared in Windows NT 3.1 (the first version of the Windows NT family, released in 1993), and later appeared on all Windows operating systems released afterwards. In its first iteration, the error screens started with *** STOP:, hence it became known as a "stop error.