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.
Notable screens of death
- The Blue Screen of Death (also called BSoD, stop error, or blue screen) is a common name for a screen displayed by the Microsoft Windows operating system when a system error occurs.
- A Black Screen of Death is a failure mode of Microsoft Windows 3.x.
- A Red Screen of Death appears in early beta versions of Windows Vista (also appeared in some early build versions of Windows 98).
- The Purple Screen of Death is used by VMware ESX Server, a server virtualization product by VMware, Inc. It is displayed in the event of a fatal kernel error. The screen provides error codes that can be used for debugging purposes.
- A kernel panic is used primarily by Unix and Unix-like operating systems: the Unix equivalent of Microsoft's Blue Screen of Death. It is a routine called when the kernel detects irrecoverable errors in runtime correctness; in other words, when continued operation may risk escalating system instability, and a system reboot is easier than attempted recovery.
- A Sad Mac is a symbol used by older-generation Apple Macintosh computers, starting with the original Macintosh 128K, 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 that was displayed when a classic Mac OS program had an application crash. The bomb symbols were also used by the Atari ST line of computers when the system encountered a fatal error. The number of bombs indicated the exact cause of the error.
- Guru Meditation is the name of the error that occurred on early versions of the Amiga computers when they crashed.
Other screens of death
The following refers to screens of death that are not based upon computer operating systems and appear instead in other media.
- A White Screen of Death appears on several other operating systems, CMS and BIOSes. One is in iOS 7, and the screen of death appears when a white iPhone 5 or later or a white iPod touch (5th generation) is frozen. Everything on the screen goes white, and a black Apple logo is all that's displayed on the screen.
- A Yellow Screen of Death occurs when an ASP.NET web application encounters a problem and crashes.
- A Green Screen of Death is a green screen that appears on a TiVo with a message that includes the words "a severe error has occurred". Its appearance often means that the hard drive of the device has failed. Blue Screens of Death on the Windows Insider builds of Windows 10 appears as green instead of blue, starting with build 14997.
See also
- Kill screen
References
