blue screen of death

2 definitions found

blue screen of death - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  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)
  

blue screen of death - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  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.