https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/definition/blue-screen-of-death-BSOD
The blue screen of death (BSOD) -- also known as a stop error screen, blue screen error, fatal error or bugcheck -- is a critical error screen that can be displayed by Microsoft Windows operating systems (OSes). In June 2025, Microsoft announced that they were retiring the BSOD after 32 years. The new interface for unexpected restarts will be available in late summer 2025 across all Windows 11 24H2 devices. It will feature a black screen and maintain any necessary technical information on-screen.
If and when a BSOD appears, it is an indication that Microsoft Windows has encountered a very severe issue from which it cannot recover on its own. A BSOD functionally renders an affected system nonoperational until the issue is resolved with some form of intervention by the user.
The term blue screen of death is a reference to the color of a user's system screen when the BSOD is triggered. A user's screen will turn blue with white text, providing a message that the system has encountered a problem. Once the BSOD appears, the system is largely inoperable or dead from a functional perspective.
A BSOD incident typically comes with no warning and all unsaved work is immediately lost. That could be the least of a user's problems, as the system is not usable until the issue that triggered the BSOD is resolved.
BSODs have been a part of the Windows OS since the release of Windows NT 3.1 in 1993. It was originally designed as a kernel error handler for situations where the OS couldn't recover from a critical error. A BSOD is intended to act as a protective measure, forcing the system to shut down to prevent catastrophic hardware failure.
A BSOD is a full system failure at the Windows kernel level due to an issue with Windows drivers and/or hardware. It is not an application crash. If the browser crashes, Windows continues to run. It's very rare that an app can cause a blue screen because they commonly run at a higher level in the OS.
While a BSOD has always had white text on a blue screen, the information and design of the BSOD has changed. Over the years, Microsoft has modified the BSOD's appearance and the information it displays in an attempt to make it somewhat user-friendly and informative.
A BSOD incident can be triggered by several hardware and software issues.
Among the types of hardware issues that can be at fault are the following:
Various types of software issues can also lead to a BSOD, including the following:
During a BSOD, stop codes appear at the bottom of the screen. There are 270 stop codes, but most are exceptionally rare. The following are the most common:
By taking the following troubleshooting steps, it's often possible to quickly resolve a BSOD incident:
Though not all BSOD incidents can be easily prevented by users, the following steps can be taken to reduce the risk:
In the announcement, Microsoft stated that a resilient organization has the ability to "maintain productivity and minimize disruptions," which is why they are moving away from the BSOD, in favor of "streamlining the unexpected restart experience."
As well as waving goodbye to the famous blue screen, Windows is incorporating quick machine recovery - a recovery mechanism for PCs - and improvements to crash dump collection to reduce restart time for users. Microsoft says these changes are part of a larger effort to reduce descriptions caused by unexpected restarts.
The BSOD screen has changed over the years across multiple versions of Windows.
Up to Windows 7, the BSOD was full of hardware information that was useless to most users.
Starting with Windows 8, it scaled down the amount of information and put a large sad emoticon on the screen. It also put a QR code on the screen so users can look up the cause of the blue screen with their smartphones.
Windows 11 briefly experimented with a black screen before reverting to blue.
Perhaps the most infamous BSOD ever occurred in July 2024 with the CrowdStrike incident.
CrowdStrike is an endpoint security vendor whose technology is widely deployed across large enterprise and mission-critical operations across the transportation, healthcare, financial services and media sectors.
The CrowdStrike Falcon endpoint agent hooks into Microsoft as a Windows kernel process. A logic flaw in an automated update for CrowdStrike triggered a BSOD that had a massive impact on IT around the world.
A BSOD is specific to Microsoft Windows OS, but there are somewhat similar kinds of critical errors on non-Windows systems.
In both Linux and Apple macOS there is the concept of a kernel panic. That error screen can vary based on OS version. Much like a BSOD, a kernel panic is triggered by bad code interacting with the OS kernel, which then renders the system unstable.
02 Jul 2025