The Blue Screen of Death Over the Years

The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is an error message that appears when Windows experiences a fatal error. The error message can show up at any time, but it is still quite rear. I’ve compiled the BSOD of all the versions of the Windows, and they are shown below.

Windows XP, Vista and 7

The Windows XP Vista and 7 BSOD

Vista’s Unique Blue Screen of Death

A unique Blue Screen of Death with only one line of error code as seen in Windows Vista, which is an ACPI-related error.

Windows NT

In Windows NT-based operating systems, the blue screen of death (displayed in 80x50 text mode as opposed to 9x/Me's 80x25) occurs when the kernel or a driver running in kernel mode encounters an error from which it cannot recover. This is usually caused by an illegal operation being performed. The only safe action the operating system can take in this situation is to restart the computer. As a result, data may be lost, as users are not given an opportunity to save data that has not yet been saved to the hard drive.

The text on the error screen contains the code of the error along with four error-dependent values in parentheses that are there to help software engineers fix the problem that occurred. Depending on the error code, it may display the address where the problem occurred, along with the driver which is loaded at that address. Under Windows NT and 2000, the second and third sections of the screen may contain information on all loaded drivers and a stack dump, respectively. The driver information is in three columns; the first lists the base address of the driver, the second lists the driver's creation date (as a Unix timestamp), and the third lists the name of the driver.^[1]

 

Windows 2000

BSOD from Windows 2000. The red portion highlights the error that crashed the computer.

Windows 98/95/ME

Perhaps the most famous instance of a Windows 9x BSoD occurred during a presentation of a Windows 98 beta by Bill Gates at COMDEX on April 20, 1998. The demo PC crashed with a BSoD when his assistant (Chris Capossela, who is still working for Microsoft as Corporate VP in the Information Working business unit) connected a scanner to the PC, trying to demonstrate Windows 98's support for Plug and Play devices. This event brought thunderous applause from the crowd and Gates replied after a nervous pause: "That must be why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet."^[3]

 

Windows CE

The simplest version of the blue screen occurs in Windows CE except the versions for Pocket PC, which appears similar to the ones found in Windows 9x/Me.

 

Windows 1.0

The very first Blue Screen of Death happens in Windows 1.0 if a computer fails to boot up properly, it will show random letters and symbols ^[4] If Windows 1.0 encounters any (MS-DOS related) critical system errors, it will instead show a Black Screen of Death.

Windows 2.0's BSOD is the very same thing.