Blue Screen of Death, an Overview

*Shudder*

What is the blue screen of death?

The blue screen of death is one of many error messages displayed by an operating system when it has experienced a fatal error, or a kernel panic, which is a low level and unrecoverable error. The actual name for this is a fatal system error, otherwise known as a system crash, stop error, kernel error, or bug check. Users are the ones who created the name blue screen of death, and they have done this because when a blue screen appears it means that the problem is big enough that you will not be able to recover anything you were working on unless it saved itself recently. The colloquial "of death" part of the name developed because of the loss of all data (occurring in accordance with Murphy's Law) when you have a deadline. They are also a strong sign that there could be something seriously wrong with your computer, and are extremely cryptic.

A blue screen is Windows specific, but all operating systems can have kernel panics, and their own way of representing them. For example, Mac used to use their sad mac screen to signify a kernel panic. They also carried this touch of humour into their iPods, and although it is cute, I hope to never see it.





What are a few reasons I would get it?

I am most certainly not an expert in dealing with a blue screen. I always just google it, but in order to make this easier for you, dear reader, I've hunted down a very nice and fairly short list of the most common error codes. If you ever get a blue screen make sure to copy that bugger down onto some scrap paper and take a look in the following list or google the stop code to find a solution. Thank you to Gateway's support page for having such a wonderful guide.
Here is a list of common blue screen errors and STOP codes:

• PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA (STOP 0x00000050)
• INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE (STOP 0x0000007B)
• UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME (STOP 0x000000ED)
• MEMORY_MANAGEMENT or IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (STOP 0x0000001A)
• IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (STOP 0x0000000A)
• DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (STOP 0x000000D1)
• KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (STOP 0x0000008E)
• KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR (STOP 0x0000007A)
• SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (STOP 0x0000007E)
• KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR (STOP 0x00000077)

Why haven't I seen it recently?

When I started this blog I realized that I hadn't gotten a blue screen in a long, long time. This seemed unreasonable to me, since kernel panicking isn't gone. I looked into it and talked to some friends and learned that yes, blue screens are still around in new versions of Windows. Probably because of how negative and popular a complaint blue screening became in regards to Windows, it has been turned off in the default settings of newer Windows operating systems.

What do I mean by that? I mean that the operating system has a setting, turned on by default, telling it to automatically reboot in the case of a blue screen. This is pretty understandable, since most of the time I'm already reaching for a hard reboot before I even remember to write that code down. It also means that if a reboot isn't the solution and a google of the code is necessary in order to know what is wrong, you are going to have one hell of a time catching that code before you get stuck rebooting again. Just imagine that, or search for it happening to someone, being unable to find out what is wrong with your computer because instead of a blue screen, which is at least vaguely useful, you get this flash of blue followed by a looping reboot. Gah!

Gosh, that's awful! How can I fix that?

Don't worry, it's very easy to change your default settings.
You just need to follow these steps:

1. Go to your control panel.
2. Open System. (In classic view)
   
3. Go to the Advanced tab in the System Properties.
4. Click on Settings in the Advanced System Recovery section.
5. In the Startup and Recovery window uncheck the check bow labeled Automatically Restart, and say OK.
   

You can also hammer F8 while rebooting and get into the following menu if you didn't get around to changing your default settings before you got a blue screen error and got stuck in a loop rebooting.


















May your computer never blue screen,
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