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A BSoD is also a "Stop Error", as known in the Windows XP manuals. The blue screen of death in one form or another has been present in all Windows operating systems since Windows version 2.0.
In Windows NT, 2000, and XP, a blue screen of death ("Stop" error) occurs when the kernel encounters an error from which it can not recover. This is usually caused by a driver that throws an unhandled exception or performs an illegal operation. The only action the user can take in this situation is to restart the computer, which results in the possible corruption or loss of data because Windows has not been properly shut down.
The "Stop" message contains the error code and its symbolic name (ex: 0x0000001E, KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED) along with four error-dependent values in parentheses. It displays the address where the problem occurred, along with the driver in question. Windows can be set up to send debugging information through a COM port to a separate kernel debugger. The debugger is necessary to perform a stack trace, as it would be impractical to copy the information off the screen, and it is not saved to disk. Also, the point at which the code crashed can be completely different from where the error originated, and thus can mislead users into believing it is a hardware error or similar.1
Under Windows NT and 2000, the second and third sections of the screen 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.
In 2003, the people at TweakXP.com found a "feature", which can be used to manually cause a blue screen. To enable it, the user needs to add a value to the Windows registry. After that, a BSoD will appear each time the user presses the Scroll Lock key, while holding the right Ctrl. [1]
The less serious (but more common) blue screen of death occurs in Microsoft's home desktop operating systems Windows 95, 98, and MeWindows Millennium Edition (originally codenamed Millennium and Georgia , also known as Windows ME a 32-bit graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft. A successor to Windows 95 and Windows 98, Windows ME mainly comprised of re. In these operating systems, the BSoD is the main way for VxDIn Microsoft computing, a VxD is a virtual device driver''. They run under the Windows 3. x, Windows 95 and Windows 98 operating systems, and have access to the memory of the kernel and all running processes, as well as raw access to the hardware. Prior ts to report errors to the user. It is internally referred to by the name of "_VWIN32_FaultPopup". A Windows 9x/Me BSoD gives the user the option to either restart or continue. However, VxDs do not display BSoDs frivolously—they usually indicate a problem which cannot be fixed without restarting the computer, and hence after a BSoD is displayed the system is usually unstable or unresponsive.
The most common reason for BSoD'ing is problems with incompatible versions of DLLs. This cause is sometimes referred to as DLL hell. Windows loads these DLLs into memory when they are needed by application programs; if versions are changed, the next time an application loads the DLL it may be different from what the application expects. These incompatibilities increase over time as more new software is installed, and is one of the main reasons why a freshly-installed copy of Windows is more stable than an "old" one.
In Windows 95 and 98, a BSoD occurs when the system attempts to access the file "c:\con\con". This is often inserted on websites to crash user's machines. Microsoft has released a patch at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms00-017.mspx.
The BSOD can appear if a user ejects a floppy disk while it is being read on 9x/ME.
This type of blue screen is no longer seen in Windows NT, 2000, and XP. In the case of these less serious software errors, the program may still crash, but it will not take down the entire operating system with it due to better memory managementMemory management is the act of managing computer memory. In its simpler forms this involves providing ways to allocate portions of memory to programs at their request and free it back to the system for reuse when no longer needed. Virtual memory systems and decreased legacy supportIn the field of computing, legacy support is an automated approach to dealing with legacy systems. A computer operating system can detect, install and troubleshoot legacy devices (i. e old devices) and hardware in the larger computer system.. In these systems, the "true" BSoD is seen only in cases where the entire operating system crashes.