black screen of death

from Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)

Black Screen of Death


   [prob.: related to the Floating Head of Death in a famous Far Side
   cartoon.] A failure mode of {Microsloth Windows}. On an attempt to
   launch a DOS box, a networked Windows system not uncommonly blanks the
   screen and locks up the PC so hard that it requires a cold {boot} to
   recover. This unhappy phenomenon is known as The Black Screen of
   Death. See also {Blue Screen of Death}, which has become rather more
   common.