Blue Screen of Death

Blue Screen of Death (also known as a blue screen or BSoD) is an error screen displayed on a Windows computer system after a fatal system error, also known as a system crash: when the operating system reaches a condition where it can no longer operate safely.

History

BSoDs have been present in Windows NT 3.1 (the first version of the Windows NT family, released in 1993) and all Windows operating systems released afterwards. (See History of Microsoft Windows.) BSoDs can be caused by poorly written device drivers or malfunctioning hardware, such as faulty memory, power supply issues, overheating of components, or hardware running beyond its specification limits. In the Windows 9x era, incompatible DLLs or bugs in the operating system kernel could also cause BSoDs. Because of the instability and lack of memory protection in Windows 9x, BSoDs were much more common.

Incorrect attribution

On 4 September 2014, several online journals, including Business Insider,DailyTech,Engadget,Gizmodo,Lifehacker,Neowin,Softpedia,TechSpot,The Register, and The Verge attributed the creation of the Blue Screen of Death to Microsoft's former CEO Steve Ballmer while citing a source that never said such a thing: An article by Raymond Chen (Microsoft employee) titled "Who wrote the text for the Ctrl+Alt+Del dialog in Windows 3.1?" The article was about the creation of the first rudimentary task manager in Windows 3.x, which shared visual similarities with a BSoD. In a follow up on 9 September 2014, Raymond Chen complained about this widespread mistake, claimed responsibility for revising the BSoD in Windows 95 and panned BGR.com for having "entirely fabricated a scenario and posited it as real". Engadget later updated its article to correct the mistake.

Blue screen

Blue screen, Blue Screen or bluescreen may refer to:

Chroma key

Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a special effects / post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on color hues (chroma range). The technique has been used heavily in many fields to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video – particularly the newscasting, motion picture and videogame industries. A color range in the top layer is made transparent, revealing another image behind. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production. This technique is also referred to as color keying, colour-separation overlay (CSO; primarily by the BBC), or by various terms for specific color-related variants such as green screen, and blue screen – chroma keying can be done with backgrounds of any color that are uniform and distinct, but green and blue backgrounds are more commonly used because they differ most distinctly in hue from most human skin colors. No part of the subject being filmed or photographed may duplicate a color used in the background.

Blue Screen (novel)

Blue Screen is a crime novel by Robert B. Parker, the fifth in his Sunny Randall series.

Plot summary

The novel begins when Sunny Randall is approached by Buddy Bolen to provide protection for his number one client, Erin Flint. Ms. Flint is the star of the Woman Warrior movie series and future star of Bolen’s major league baseball team. Ms. Flint initially hates the idea of Sunny following her around but begrudgingly agrees to the arrangement at Buddy’s behest. Bolen’s fears seem to have been well founded when Erin’s assistant, Misty, is murdered. Because of Misty’s striking resemblance to her, Erin is convinced the killer was after her. Sunny meets Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone at the scene of the crime; however Buddy and Erin lack confidence in the Paradise police, and ask Sunny to solve the crime.

Sunny travels to L.A. where she meets her friend Tony Gault, a Hollywood agent with whom she has a casual sexual relationship. He puts her in touch with a sports writer who is convinced that Erin Flint’s addition to Buddy Bolen’s baseball team is a publicity stunt. It is his opinion that the baseball team was a bad buy on Bolen’s part because they have no market or fan base. Neither does he believe that Erin will be able to compete with the male players in the major league. He does think, however, that the publicity will generate enough interest in the team to allow Bolen to dump his bad investment. He proves to be right later when Erin faces a major league pitcher and cannot hit one ball.

Screen of death

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