blue screen of death

English

Etymology

First use appears c. 1993 with the release of Windows NT 3.1. See cite below.

Noun

blue screen of death (plural blue screens of death)

  1. (computing, informal) An error screen displayed by some operating systems, especially Microsoft Windows, after encountering an unrecoverable error which causes the system to shut down.
    Synonyms: blue screen, BSOD, stop error
    • 1993 October 10, tay...@saturn.brooks.af.mil, “NT Patch--doesn't fix Services for Macintosh”, in comp.os.ms-windows.nt.setup‎[1] (Usenet):
      The only remaining problem is--NT still locks up the machine at exactly the same point. The only difference is that I don't get the blue screen of death--NT just freezes.
    • 2007, Paul Lilly, “BSOD Crash Course”, in Maximum PC, page 40:
      A Blue Screen of Death is like an encrypted message from your computer telling you there's a problem. We're going to help you make sense of the gobbledygook so you can fix whatever's ailing your PC!

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Further reading

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