Blue Screen of Death

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A Blue Screen of Death in Windows XP and Windows Vista.

A Blue Screen of Death, otherwise known as a "stop error" or BSOD occurs when an operating system cannot recover, or is in danger of being unable to recover from a system error. This can often occur due to a badly written device driver, bad memory, or a damaged registry.

Reading a BSOD

There are four sections of a Blue Screen of Death. Users should be aware of these sections to troubleshoot errors. According to Microsoft,

  • The first section lists the error message pertaining to the crash and type of error.
  • The second section lists modules that have already been loaded into memory.
  • The third section lists the modules that should have loaded before the error.
  • The fourth section lists the current status of the Kernel Debugger.

Disable Auto-Reboot

Windows XP run Auto-Reboot, which will restart the computer after a BSOD error. In order to prevent this from occuring, follow the instructions below to disable the Auto-Reboot.

1. Go to Start > Control Panel, and double-click the System icon.
2. Select the Advanced tab and click the Settings button under "Startup and Recovery" section.
3. Under "System Failure", uncheck the "Automatically Restart" option. Click OK and close all windows.

Red Screen of Death

Similarly, in Windows Vista, this is now a Red Screen of Death which warns the user of a Boot Loader Error.

Related Links: 

 http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/winntas/tips/techrep/bsod.mspx
 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216206
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