The official name of the ‘blue screen of death’ is ‘stop error’. The actual colour of the screen of death may vary across different devices, from green, to yellow, to black, but the colloquialism for this screen is ‘blue screen of death’. The colour blue was chosen because the colours of the platform Alpha could not be changed easily, and so in the interests of consistency blue became the default colour for the ‘stop error’ screen.
Blue screens appear to prevent further damage from happening to the system. These screens don’t happen a lot, but when they do, you should pay attention and try and figure out what is causing them and fix the problem. They occur when a system comes across a problem from which it cannot recover.
What Causes A Blue Screen?
Hardware failures are a common cause, and can evoke blue screens. They can also be triggered by power supplies, or overheating of computer components. Illegal software is often a cause. The only safe action is to restart your computer. The threat with blue screens is that your computer may not be able to reboot, in which case you will have to reinstall your operating system. There is also the frustration of whatever has not been saved being lost.
One thing common to all blue screens is that it will provide you with information in text on the screen. This may spell out the exact cause of the problem. In some cases, however, the text is too vague to help you identify the exact cause of the failure. It can also help identify the address where the problem occurred. Often the symbolic name of the error appears by the stop error number.
What to Do When it Happens
The recommendation section will give you advice about how to proceed. If your debug and dump sections are enabled, then the last section will give you information relating to them. There is information on the internet about what the messages mean when they appear on a blue screen. If you don’t feel confident about attempting to fix the problem yourself, make a note of the text before rebooting your computer and take it in to a technician to be repaired. Whatever the case, the blue screen of death should never to be ignored, as it will lead to further problems.
The most famous example of a blue screen occurrence is in a presentation by Bill Gates in 1998. This was met with thunderous applause.