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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. Screens of death are usually the result of a kernel panic, although the terms are frequently used interchangeably. Most screens of death are displayed on an even background color with a message advising the user to restart the computer. Xscreensaver includes a BSOD module displaying simulated screens of death from many different operating systems.
[edit] Notable Screens of Death
- 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. At times, a Red Screen of Death (RSoD) may appear, as seen on the Windows 2008 server and a few beta builds of Windows, such as Memphis or Longhorn. It defines very critical hardware errors, or boot errors.
- The Black Screen of Death is usually one of four 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), the Nintendo Wii's non-recoverable brick screen, or the Linux Black Screen of Death.
- Several different operating systems and BIOSes may display a White Screen of Death for different types of failures.
- A Sad Mac is an iconic symbol used by older-generation Apple Macintosh computers, starting with the original 128K Macintosh, to indicate a severe hardware or software problem that prevented startup from occurring successfully. A similar symbol exists for the iPod.
- 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.
- Guru Meditation is the name of the error that occurred on early versions of the Amiga home computers when they crashed.
[edit] See also
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Screens of death |
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