Blue screen of death

The blue screen of death (BSoD) – or blue screen error, blue screen, fatal error, bugcheck, and officially known as a stop error – is a critical error screen displayed by the Microsoft Windows operating systems to indicate a system crash, in which the operating system reaches a critical condition where it can no longer operate safely.

The name comes from the blue colored background used predominately on the error screens found in the majority of Windows releases. Possible issues contributing to a BSoD may include hardware failures, an issue with or without a device driver, viruses, malware, and other factors such as intentional user action.