blue screen of death

Blue Screen of Death
 n.

   [common] This term is closely related to the older {Black Screen of
   Death} but much more common (many non-hackers have picked it up). Due
   to the extreme fragility and bugginess of Microsoft Windows,
   misbehaving applications can readily crash the OS (and the OS
   sometimes crashes itself spontaneously). The Blue Screen of Death,
   sometimes decorated with hex error codes, is what you get when this
   happens. (Commonly abbreviated {BSOD}.) The following entry from the
   Salon Haiku Contest, seems to have predated popular use of the term:

        Windows NT crashed.
        I am the Blue Screen of Death
        No one hears your screams.
    

Blue Screen of Death
BSOD

   <humour> (BSOD) The infamous white-on-blue text screen which
   appears when {Microsoft Windows} crashes.  BSOD is mostly seen
   on the 16-bit systems such as {Windows 3.1}, but also on
   {Windows 95} and apparently even under {Windows NT 4}.  It is
   most likely to be caused by a {GPF}, although Windows 95 can
   do it if you've removed a required {CD-ROM} from the drive.
   It is often impossible to recover cleanly from a BSOD.

   The acronym BSOD is sometimes used as a verb, e.g. "{Windoze}
   just keeps BSODing on me today".

   (1998-09-08)