blue screen of death

English

The blue screen of death on a public payphone.

The blue screen of death in Windows 8.

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!

Derived terms

• red ring of death
• screen of death

 

Translations

screen indicating a system error

• Arabic: شَاشَة الْمَوْت الزَّرْقَاء f (šāšat al-mawt az-zarqāʔ)
• Azerbaijani: BSOD, ölümün göy ekranı
• Belarusian: сі́ні экра́н сме́рці m (síni ekrán smjérci)
• Bulgarian: син екра́н на смъртта́ m (sin ekrán na smǎrttá)
• Catalan: pantalla blava de la mort f
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 藍mon / 蓝mon (laam⁴ mon¹)

  Mandarin: 藍屏死機 / 蓝屏死机 (lánpíng sǐjī), 藍色當機畫面 / 蓝色当机画面 (lánsè dāngjī huàmiàn), 藍屏 / 蓝屏 (zh) (lánpíng)

• Czech: modrá obrazovka smrti f
• Danish: BSOD, blå skærm c, blå skærm af død c
• Dutch: blauw scherm des dood n
• Estonian: sinine surmaekraan (et)
• Finnish: BSOD (fi), sininen kuolemanruutu
• French: écran bleu de la mort m
• German: Bluescreen m, Blauschirm m (less common)
• Greek: μπλε οθόνη του θανάτου (ble othóni tou thanátou)
• Hebrew: המוות הכחול
• Hungarian: kék halál (hu)
• Indonesian: BSOD, Layar Biru Kematian
• Italian: schermo blu della morte m
• Japanese: 死の青スクリーン (しのあおスクリーン, shi no ao sukurīn), ブルースクリーン (ja) (burū sukurīn)
• Korean: 죽음의 파란 화면 (jugeum-ui paran hwamyeon), 블루스크린 (beulluseukeurin)
• Macedonian: син екра́н на смртта m (sin ekrán na smrtta)
• Malay: skrin biru mati
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: blåskjerm m

• Persian:

  Iranian Persian: صَفْحِهٔ آبیِ مَرْگ (safhe-ye âbi-ye marg)

• Polish: niebieski ekran śmierci m
• Portuguese: tela azul da morte (pt) f (Brazil), ecrã azul da morte (pt) f (Portugal)
• Romanian: BSOD, ecranul albastru al morții n
• Russian: си́ний экра́н сме́рти (ru) m (sínij ekrán smérti), голубо́й экра́н сме́рти m (golubój ekrán smérti)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: плави ѐкра̄н смрти m

  Roman: plavi èkrān smrti m

• Slovak: modrá obrazovka smrti f
• Slovene: modri zaslon m, modri zaslon smrti m
• Spanish: pantalla azul de la muerte f
• Swedish: blåskärm (sv) c, blå skärm av döden c
• Tagalog: Bughaw na Tabing ng Kamatayan
• Thai: จอฟ้ามรณะ
• Turkish: mavi ekran
• Ukrainian: си́ній екра́н сме́рті m (sýnij ekrán smérti)
• Vietnamese: màn hình xanh chết chóc

See also

• fatal system error, kernel panic, red ring of death, yellow light of death fail whale

Further reading

• blue screen of death on Wikipedia.Wikipedia