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In many computer operating systems, a special type of error message will display onscreen when the system has experienced a fatal error. Computer users have dubbed these messages Screens of Death, as they typically result in unsaved work being lost and often indicate serious problems with the system's hardware or software. Most screens of death are displayed on an even background color with a message advising the user to restart the computer. The Screens of Death are primarily organized by their background color.

Black

The Black Screen of Death (BSOD), is usually one of three things: a failure mode of Microsoft Windows 3.x, the screen displayed by the OS/2 operating system in the event of either a system error from which it cannot recover or a "hard" error in a program running in "full screen" mode (the former being a serious system failure but the latter being a less serious application failure), or the Linux Black Screen of Death. The Nintendo DS handheld game console also may display a fatal error message on a black screen.

The black screen of death has been present in all versions of OS/2.

The Windows black screen of death

In Windows 3.x the black screen of death is the behavior that occurred when a DOS-based application failed to execute properly. It was often known to occur in connection with attempting certain operations while networking drivers were resident in memory. (Commonly, but not exclusively, it was seen while the Novell NetWare client for DOS, NETX, was loaded.) The system would switch the display to text mode, but would display nothing, leaving the user looking at an entirely black screen with a blinking caret in the upper left corner. At this point, the user could do nothing but perform a cold reboot to get the system running normally again.

According to Wallace McClure of ASP.net, the phrase was originally coined in the summer of 1991 by Ed Brown, a technician with Coca-Cola Company's IT department in Atlanta, GA. He reports that the company was rolling out Windows 3.0 within the Global Marketing group and when the users would attempt to run WordPerfect, they would randomly receive a BSOD.

This can also be triggered by something on the keyboard during a boot. In this case, it is accompanied by a very loud beeping sound directly from the computer itself.

Windows XP displays a black screen with white arrow if lsass.exe is missing or corrupted.

On Windows Vista, some boot errors are shown on a black screen. These generally occur when winload.exe is missing or corrupted. It may also be displayed when the user has performed a cold reboot, or there was power interruption that made the computer automatically shut down.

The OS/2 black screen of death

In OS/2, a black screen of death is either a "TRAP screen" or "full-screen hard-error VIO pop-up". OS/2 switches the display adapter to a text mode of 80 columns by 25 rows, with white lettering on a black background and a black border, utilizing the text mode font of the display adapter.

TRAP screens

A "TRAP screen" occurs when the kernel encounters an error from which it cannot recover, a system crash. Usually this is a result of faulty (or overclocked) hardware, but it may also result from a software error in either the kernel or a device driver.

The "TRAP screen" contains a dump of the processor registers and stack, and information about the version of the operating system and the actual processor exception that was triggered.

The only actions the user can take in this situation is to perform a soft reboot by pressing Control-Alt-Delete or to perform a system dump by pressing Control-Alt-NumLock twice.

Hard error screens

A "full-screen hard-error VIO pop-up" occurs when a process incurs a "hard" error, either an outright application program crash or a potentially recoverable hard error (such as an attempt to access a floppy disc device where no disc has been inserted into the drive).

The screen is displayed by the "hard error daemon" process, which handles hard errors from all other processes. Technically, the screen is a "VIO pop-up" screen. All processes (except the one that has incurred the error, any that also incur hard errors whilst the first error is being displayed, and any that themselves wish to display a "VIO pop-up" screen) continue to run, and the system continues to operate as normal. The hard error daemon uses a VIO pop-up when either the system has been booted into text mode or the hard error has occurred in a process running in a full-screen session.

The "pop-up screen" contains information about the processor exception that was triggered and the identity of the process.

The user is prompted for the action to be taken, and may choose

• to end the process,
• to display more information (which comprises a dump of the processor registers and stack for that process),
• to retry the operation (if appropriate — I/O errors are retryable, CPU errors are not), or
• to ignore the problem and continue (if appropriate — I/O errors are ignorable, CPU errors are not).

Linux Black Screen of Death

A Linux Black Screen of Death is caused by a kernel panic or any other error that results in the system falling back to a text-based command line interface.

Nintendo DS

When the Nintendo DS boots to a DS game instead of the main menu, when the user removes the game cartridge, there will be a message on the bottom screen that reads: "Game cartridge has been removed." on a black background. Also, if the game started with sound, the last fifth of a second of audio will be played over and over. This also freezes the DS because if the user inserts the game cartridge back in the slot, it will not resume, thus, requiring a reboot. See also: Checking the firmware version for the Nintendo DS

Wii

The Wii video game console also displays a black screen of death, accompanied by an abnormal noise, when there are hardware or disc problems. It is currently unfixable on version 3.3. It is advised that the user does not install any untrusted WAD files to avoid it, because once the user encounters the screen of death, there is nothing that can be done to save it.

Xbox

If a game crashes while it is loading, a black screen with text such as "An error has occurred, the disc may be dirty or damaged" may appear. This can be seen in Need For Speed Underground 2 if a race fails to load or in Madden NFL 06 if a match fails to load. It will also appear in Fable and Fable: The Lost Chapters, usually after loading a game for a very long time.

Xbox 360

Xbox 360 may display black screen with error code (for example, E74) if hardware failure occurred.

Sansa Fuze/Sansa e200

On the Sansa Fuze as well as the Sansa e200, if you put the switch in "lock" position while the device is booting up, or if it has insufficient battery power, a black screen showing "System Shutdown" will appear. It can be easily fixed by rebooting the device.

Red

A "red screen of death" is used on some game consoles, and early beta versions of Windows Vista used a red screen for boot loader errors. There is also a Red Screen of Death on the PlayStation Portable and certain versions of Linux. A Red Screen Of Death can also occur on the PlayStation 2, which reads "Please insert a PlayStation or PlayStation2 format disc". This message usually occurs when a disk inserted in the PlayStation 2 is incompatible. But it sometimes appears due to hardware failure. it can also happen on the Nintendo Wii.

Yellow

Nintendo DS

On the original Nintendo DS when the user removes a DS or GBA game cartridge while in Pictochat, both screens will turn completely yellow. In contrast, on the Nintendo DS Lite, both screens will appear purple or blue depending on the system firmware version. Doing this with the DSi, nothing will happen. The system won't crash.

Green

The Green Screen of Death (GSoD or Green Screen of Intensive Care) is the name given to failure modes on the TiVo digital video recorder and Xbox 360 console game system platforms. In such instances on the Xbox 360 the user is prompted to contact Xbox customer support.

This error also occurs on the original Xbox when the system identifies the disc as a disc readable by the system, but an error occurs when reading it, and gives an error message similar to its successor's.

On TiVo machines, the causes of it vary, but it is generally regarded as a recoverable error despite its grave appearance. The message is displayed while the TiVo attempts to repair the data contents of its hard drive.

The GSoD text reads as follows:

A severe error has occurred.

Please leave the Receiver plugged in and connected

to the phone line for the next 3 hours while the

Receiver attempts to repair itself.

DO NOT UNPLUG OR RESTART THE RECEIVER.

If, after three hours, the Receiver does not restart

itself, call Customer Care at 1-877-367-8486.

The GSoD has also been present on PlayStation 2 consoles with poorly soldered Multi-X chips. There are no error messages for the GSoD on a PlayStation 2, which means there is only an even green color displayed on the screen until the console is restarted. The GSoD is received after a failed disc read. This problem is common with DMS chips.

Blue

The Blue Screen of Death (also called BSOD, stop error, or bluescreen) is a common name for a screen displayed by the Microsoft Windows operating system when a system error occurs. There are two main types of BSODs. The Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7 indicates a serious kernel or driver error. The Windows 9x/ME is not as serious and occurs more often when a driver encounters an error. 9x/ME BSODs can also appear when a CD, floppy disk, or other removable memory device is removed from its drive while being used. The NT BSOD only lets the user restart the system, whereas the 9x/ME version usually allows the user to continue. Generally, rebooting is the only way to fix the error. Windows CE also has a BSOD, being the simplest of them all. The PlayStation Portable has its own blue error screen as well. This screen indicates corrupt system settings and attempts to correct any errors.

The BSOD has become a commonly known term in IT. Administrators often use the word "Bluescreen" as a verb. Microsoft has recently released BSOD prank software, originally made by Sysinternals. The software detects the operating system of the computer, and displays the relevant BSOD, along with fake hard drive chatter. It then simulates restarting the machine, and repeats the cycle again. Many anti-virus programs report this screen saver as an "unwanted program" because it attempts to fool users even though as a program it is not harmful to the system.

With the BSOD, it is possible to connect a second computer via a serial cable and run WinDbg to access diagnostic information. This is a useful tool for device driver writers who often receive BSOD while writing their drivers. The BSOD is actually an exception that halts the operating system, but there are lots of utilities that can still run through WinDebug while the computer is in a BSOD.

In rare cases, Windows XP may hang right before the logon screen is displayed, leading to an empty "blue" screen with a movable 'busy' mouse pointer. The BSOA or Blue Screen Of Albert is a popular internet fad with a picture of an edited Windows 9/X BSOD

The Apple IIgs computer also had its own BSOD, with an Apple icon bouncing across the screen whenever the IIgs crashed or was started up with no disk in the drive(s).

Purple

Purple Screen of Death (PSOD) occurs in VMware when an ESX vmkernel experiences a critical failure.

A similar "Purple Screen of Death" may occur on Windows Vista when the graphics drivers fail.

Nintendo DS

When the DS is in Pictochat and the user removes a Game Boy or DS cartridge, both screens will turn purple. It also may be blue depending on the system firmware version. On the original DS, it would be yellow.

iPhone/iPod Touch

An iPod Touch or iPhone that requires a reinstall of the operating system will show a Pink Screen of Death, with a USB cable pointing to an iTunes icon, notifying the user that they need to restore their device.

Gray

The original front-loading Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) video game console would sometimes show a blank gray screen if the cartridge would not start. As a play on the traditional Blue Screen of Death, NES fans have dubbed this the Gray Screen of Death. After repeated attempts to boot a game, the system power light will flash on and off, displaying a different color on the screen each time it is on. On the top loading NES, however, this screen would be green instead of gray.

On Mac OS X a Kernel panic (see below) causes a gray screen. This is known on the Mac forums by several names, including "Gray Screen of Death (GSOD)" and "Gray Curtains of Death (GCOD)".

On a DVD Player, if a disc error causes a playing disc to crash. It will sometimes crash the entire player and make it show a uniform gray or green screen on its screen or on the television screen. If this happens, the only way out is usually to unplug the player.

White

The White Screen of Death (WSoD) affects some newer mobile phones and Pocket PCs leaving them with a blank white screen. It was first mentioned in user groups in April 2005. In some cases unplugging the battery and restarting allowed the phone to reboot but some phones are left unusable. Most users found that WSoD was initiated by USB plug removal during mobile phone to computer transfer, and other users reported erratic functioning of the phone after the installation of games, applications and MP3s. WSoD has so far been observed on mobile phones in the USA and Europe. A reflash of firmware can resolve the problem of WSoD but users have reported the same bug on newer phones in the same product line. A flashing White Screen of Death has also been known.

On most Linux distributions, failing to configure a certain video driver, failing to properly execute X, or in other situations (configuration of Beryl or Compiz) can also result in a White Screen of Death, or will drop back down to a text mode console.

On iPods, if the firmware is corrupted, a white screen with black text in several languages prompts the user to connect the iPod to a computer and restore it. Recently iPods have not been displaying any text during a screen of death, and thus not letting the user know the exact nature of the problem. Solution for an iPod's white screen of death range from leaving the device plugging in for an extended period of time, to letting the battery runout, to having to send the iPod away for repair.

On the Sega Game Gear, if the system is started without a cartridge, the screen will be gray/white.

On some rare cases the Rio will show a complete blank white screen from a crash of the firmware and the device will usually get very hot from the CPU overheating from the crash. To solve the problem, the user must do a hard reset by plugging the charger into the Rio and sticking a small, thin object into a hole in the case.

On some Microsoft Windows versions, if system can't find a required, critical file to boot, a White Box of Doom will appear. More recently, users have noticed that Microsoft Vista will also experience a White Screen of Death (WSOD) when the operating system completely locks up and everything on the screen turns to a semi-transparent white. There is no known solution to this bug, other than forcing a powerdown and rebooting the system.

Game Boy

When the Game Boy starts up with no cartridge inserted or if a Nintendo DS boots up to the Game Boy operating system and before the game can start, the user removes the game cartridge, after the boot video is done playing and fades away, the screen will be completely white and will freeze the system leaving the user no choice but to reboot.

Kernel panic

A kernel panic is an action taken by Unix or Unix-like operating systems upon detecting an internal fatal error from which it cannot recover. The kernel routines that handle panics (in AT&T-derived and BSD Unix source code, a routine known as panic()) are generally designed to output an error message to the console, dump an image of kernel memory to disk for post-mortem debugging and then either wait for the system to be manually rebooted, or initiate an automatic reboot. The information provided is not always useful to the end user, but can sometimes provide troubleshooting data for a system developer or tech support personnel. The format of the panic error message varies depending on the nature of the error and the specific operating system.

Attempts by the operating system to read an invalid or unpermitted memory address are a common source of kernel panics. A panic may also occur as a result of a hardware failure or a bug in the operating system.

A kernel panic usually takes the form of a text dump to the main screen of the computer, sometimes overwriting any graphical content on the screen. A notable exception is that of later versions of Mac OS X, which generally hide the text dump behind a message to reboot the system; the debugging information is still available as a logfile. The Mac OS X kernel panic has been nicknamed "The Gray Screen of Panic and Disarray" or "The Mac Screen of Death" by some Mac OS X users.

Sad

Sad Mac

A Sad Mac is an iconic symbol used by older-generation Apple Macintosh computers (hardware using the Old World ROM), starting with the original 128K Macintosh, to indicate a severe hardware or software problem that prevented startup from occurring successfully. The Sad Mac icon was displayed, along with a set of hexadecimal codes that indicated the type of problem at startup. This was used in place of the normal Happy Mac icon, which indicated that the startup-time hardware tests were successful. In earlier models, a tune (Chimes of Death) was played, and later models featured a digitized sound of a car crash, the sound of glass breaking, or the sounds of doom and the sound played after someone tells a very funny joke combined in one sound. In the MC68000-based machines (those models earlier than the Macintosh II as well as the original Macintosh Classic), all it did was crash silently and display the Sad Mac, without playing any music.

A Sad Mac may be deliberately generated at startup by pressing the interrupt switch on Macintoshes that had one installed, or by pressing Command and Power keys shortly after the startup chime. On some Macintoshes (e.g. PowerBook 540c) if the user presses the command and power keys before the screen comes up, it will play the chimes of death; the chimes are a fraction of normal speed and there is no Sad Mac displayed.

Sad iPod

On the iPod, if damage or an error occurs to the hardware (or the firmware), as if the files of it are deleted, a Sad iPod appears. It may also play a death chime rarely called the "iPod Click of Death."

Sad iPhone

MobileSubstrate, a software plugin framework associated with the Winterboard customization application on jailbroken devices running iPhone OS can occasionally crash due to invalid plugins. This triggers a Safe Mode for the device that disables all theming and plugins. In recent versions, a modified Sad iPhone wallpaper by a Flickr user is displayed on the device's lock screen.

Bomb

The Bomb icon is a symbol designed by Susan Kare that was displayed when a "classic" Macintosh operating system (pre-Mac OS X) program had an application crash. It was similar to a dialog box in Windows 9x that said "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down". But, since the "classic" Mac OS offered no memory protection, this would sometimes result in a system crash which could take down the entire system, unlike Mac OS X and Windows NT which only force-quit the offending program. System 7 and later also tried to do this, but if the operation failed a fatal system error could occur.

The bomb symbol first appeared on the original Macintosh in 1984. Often, a reason for the crash including the error code was displayed in the dialog. If a person was lucky, a "Continue" button would be an option, which could be used to dismiss the dialog and force the offending program to quit (on the programmer side, this was implemented by using a resume procedure, passed to InitDialogs), but most often the computer would have to be restarted. The debugger program MacsBug was sometimes used even by end users to provide basic (though not always reliable) error recovery, and could be used for troubleshooting purposes much as the output of a Unix kernel panic or a Windows NT Blue Screen of Death could be. Classic Mac OS bomb boxes were often ridiculed for providing little or no useful information about the error; this was a conscious decision by the Macintosh team to eliminate any information that the end user could not make sense of.

In Mac OS X, the bomb symbol is no longer used since the system architecture is vastly different from that in the classic Mac OS, and an application crash rarely brings down the entire system. A kernel panic screen (either text overwritten on the screen in older versions, or simplified to a reboot message in more recent versions) replaces the bomb symbol but appears less often due to the radically different process management model.

TOS-based systems, such as the Atari ST, used a row of bombs to indicate a critical system error. The number of bombs displayed revealed information about the occurred error. The error (also called an exception) is reported by the Motorola 68000 microprocessor. Very early versions of TOS used mushroom clouds instead of bombs.

Guru Meditation

Guru Meditation is the name of the error that occurred on early versions of the Amiga home computers when they crashed. It is analogous to the "screens of death" in other operating systems.

When a Guru Meditation is displayed, the options are to reboot by pressing the left mouse button, or to invoke ROMWack by pressing the right mouse button on the Amiga itself. The keyboard of any attached terminal is ignored at this point.

AmigaOS 1.x machines displayed all alerts, recoverable or otherwise, with red-on-black text, with a flashing red border (see illustration). AmigaOS 2.x and later offered recoverable alerts in yellow. While only the most critical failures resulted in the whole screen going black, nearly all alerts were displayed as a strip across the top of the screen, causing the remainder of the display to shift downward. Alerts are implemented as a separate screen, and relied on the Amiga's ability to display multiple screens and multiple resolutions concurrently to effect the display.

This error is sometimes referred to colloquially as a "trip to India", "Guru", or just "alert".

The alert occurred when there was a fatal problem with the system. If the system had no means of recovery, it could display the alert, even in systems with numerous critical flaws. In extreme cases, the alert could even be displayed if the system's memory was completely exhausted.

Video game consoles

For more information, see other sections above.

Red ring of death (Xbox 360)

When a Xbox 360 console experiences a "general hardware failure", on the front of the console three flashing red lights appear (known as the red ring of death). This is reported to be caused by overheating, as the chips on the circuit board warp and break a contact. This error is non-recoverable, and is covered by the warranty. Newer Xbox 360 motherboards have a much smaller chance of receiving this error, while the older versions had a chance as high as 33%.

Yellow Light of Death (PlayStation 3)

There exists a PlayStation 3 version of the Xbox360's red ring of death called the yellow light of death. When the console tries to start up, the red idle light turns to green like normal, then for a moment flashes a yellow light, beeps three times, stops booting, then goes to a steady blinking red light. This problem is thought to have the same cause as the Xbox360. A remedy for this problem can be achieved by reflowing the CPU and GPU. Be advised, this method should be a last resort given that any warranty you might have on the system is expired.

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. Additionally the recalled Game Kakuto Chojin displays a BSoD as an error message when the disc is dirty.

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:\.

Nintendo DS

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 version -- version 6 firmware, found on most DS machines is blue, while the version 5 firmware, found on DS Lite consoles, is magenta. 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, and some have yellow screens of death. The Mario Kart edition of the DS shows an Yellow Screen of Death under those circumstances. 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 Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and Pokémon Platinum will result in a blue error screen. It is also possible to reach a blue debug screen in Mario 64 DS. If the game freezes and a certain button combination is entered, the screen appears.

MS-DOS EMM386 Errors

Under MS-DOS, the EMM386 expanded memory manager would install a critical error handler that would halt the system if certain error conditions occurred. MS-DOS has very primitive memory management by modern standards (as of 2004) and no general support for memory protection, as it is a single-tasking operating system (for the most part; it could run multiple programs simultaneously in some cases, including TSR utilities running from interrupts or programs running in a task swapper under MS-DOS 5.0 and later, such as the IBM DOS Shell included with IBM DOS 5.0.) EMM386 would trap a number of errors, mainly memory access protection exceptions, and handle them by halting the system and displaying a short message on a black text-mode screen. A typical message would be similar to:

EMM386 has detected error #12
To prevent data loss, the system has been halted.

EMM386 is the Expanded Memory Manager for simulating LIM EMS-compliant Expanded Memory using Extended (XMS) Memory, and it requires HIMEM.SYS to be loaded. Therefore, these EMM386 halting errors can only occur on DOS systems which have both HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE loaded (at boot via CONFIG.SYS); a large majority of systems did load both of these. Nonetheless, the EMM386 errors were not very commonly seen, and many users who ran mainstream DOS productivity software five days a week for a year or more may never have seen them, unlike the Windows screen-of-death errors which most users in an office environment have seen at least once or twice.

Other Error Screens

This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Screen of death" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• On Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and later versions of Windows, when a critical system process fails unexpectedly, either terminated by the user or due to a system infection (worm), or a remote procedure failure, a System Shutdown dialog box appears, giving the user 30~60 seconds to save their work and prepare for a system restart. On Windows Vista and later, there is no countdown (the dialog states "less than a minute") and can be hidden without canceling the shutdown. It is not possible for users to cancel the shutdown via the dialog, although it may be canceled by other administration tools, such as issuing the command shutdown -a (abort) to the system via the Run dialog box. It is also possible to quickly change the date and time settings to push the scheduled shutdown far into the future. If a Microsoft Office program has an unsaved document open, selecting "Cancel" from the dialog box will stop the automatic shutdown. Below the System Shutdown dialog's time remaining section, it explains the reason for the shutdown. An interesting side note to this is that if the user changes the date or time backwards, it will reflect the backwards shift in the shutdown countdown (I.e. if the user sets the year from 2009 to 2008, it will count down exactly one year more).
• Many classic arcade video games have levels affected by bugs that cause the game to end; these are called kill screens.

References

1. "Origins of BSOD". Retrieved 2008-11-01.
2. "Microsoft's Fake Blue Screen of Death Screen Saver". Retrieved 2008-11-01.
3. "Windows XP logon BSOD".
4. "HowardForums".
5. "N-gage Forums".
6. "Macintosh: "Sad Macintosh" Error Code Meaning". Apple. 2003-11-30. Retrieved 2008-08-24.
7. ^ "Types Of Blue Screen Errors,Blue Screen Of Death Fix,Common Blue Screen Errors". Blue Screen Problems. Retrieved 2009-05-06.
8. . Ezine @rticles. Retrieved 2009-05-06. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)

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