Talk:Screen of death

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ALL Pokemon games, not just D&P[edit]

ALL Pokemon games that I've seen have the "save file is corrupted" screen thing not just Diamond and Pearl. Should this be added to the article? Purplewowies (talk) 02:09, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not notable. Mseingth2133444 (Did I mess up? Let me know here) 00:16, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Default Header[edit]

Guru meditations, rows of bombs, sad Macs, Grim Reapers...programmers are silly people. -Toptomcat 23:41, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What's also silly is redirecting all those separate articles into one unwieldy central article. (Especially kernel panic, which predates the concept of a BSOD by at least 20 years.) The redirecting is being undone. Haikupoet 01:15, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This has resulted in a rather stupid state that the sections of this article are copy-and-paste duplicates of the individual articles. Material copied directly from other articles should be replaced by a wikilink to those articles. JIP | Talk 10:00, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I could do it, but I'd be afraid of taking a chainsaw to the article and turning "just right" into "not enough". Haikupoet 03:25, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re-rewriting[edit]

Okay, I took a look at the history, and it seems that someone has meticulously added most of the redundant commentary that had been taken out. I reverted to the state of the article on 13 November, then added in an intro that had been written by a later editor. There really is no need for this article to be anything but a summary -- each individual screen of death (with the exception of White, which doesn't seem to have much to say for itself, being not so much a failure mode as a failure) has its own article in much greater detail. There's no need to elaborate much beyond this, and there's certainly no reason to go back to merging the contents of the other articles back in here as was done before. (Not only does it make for an unwieldy page in terms of navigation, but as it was originally done it was Windows-centric, definitely an NPOV violation).

I'd like to address the comment in the history about a summary format not being needed because the article is under 32K -- that isn't the only consideration here. Disambig pages don't have extensive information on the items they disambiguate, and this particular page serves a rather similar function. Short descriptions are all that is really necessary, and those who wish further information can go to the article without having to scroll through information they don't want. Haikupoet 03:42, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Well Windows NT5.1 (XP) and the Black Screen of death is still here. It didn't go away with Windows 3.x and NT 3.x !! 74.224.98.169 00:56, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Windows Vista "Black screen of darkness"[edit]

It's been reported that Microsoft has just activated a new "feature" in Windows Vista, where users of pirated versions will experience a "Black screen of darkness". Unlike other screens of death, this isn't really a system error, but rather an anti-piracy measure. Does it qualify as a screen of death? If so, it should probably be added. Lachlan Hunt 05:16, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:Guru meditation.gif[edit]

Image:Guru meditation.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 14:33, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:Blacksod.png[edit]

Image:Blacksod.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 04:06, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:OS2TRAP.PNG[edit]

Image:OS2TRAP.PNG is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 16:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

xbox[edit]

The Green Screen of Death (GSoD or Green Screen of Intensive Care) is the name given to failure modes on the TiVo digital video recorder and Microsoft Xbox 360 console game system platforms. In such instances on the Xbox 360 the user is prompted to contact Xbox customer support.

This error also occurs on the original Xbox when the system identifies the disc as a disc readable by the system, but an error occurs when reading it, and gives an error message similar to its predecessor's.''

The original Xbox didn´t have a green screen of death. It was Black with green letters prompting the user to contact Xbox customer support and a number that indicates the error. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.48.193.21 (talk) 05:09, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I take it I'm the only person to get a GSOD on XP then? Must just be me getting lucky....

Tom::Leave a message 16:19, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mozilla? Seriously?[edit]

Ok, WTF is up with the "yellow screen of death?" It lists *userland* errors displayed by Mozilla and ASP.NET. Neither are OS-level fatal errors as the summary describes. Can we do away with these please? Or at least cite them? They look incredibly fabricated and out of place. --Chris (talk) 14:39, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, this does not make sens to list as a screen of death. There is nothing fatal about it, it's just an error showing a page.--219.165.234.146 (talk) 08:49, 3 December 2008 (UTC) will not read any games and will frie ur internet box — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.156.50.33 (talk) 03:16, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Xbox 360[edit]

I changed the heading for Xbox 360 to "Red ring of death", because all the other headings also had the name of the screen. 81.8.156.41 (talk) 10:58, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image copyright problem with Image:Longhorn RSoD.png[edit]

The image Image:Longhorn RSoD.png is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

  • That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
  • That this article is linked to from the image description page.

The following images also have this problem:

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --07:25, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Date of Sad Mac debut[edit]

I think the Sad Mac was there from day one. In particular, I think if you installed the programmers switch on a Mac 128 from 1984 and hit the "interrupt" switch you would get a Sad Mac. I removed The Sad Mac was made in 1987 by Apple Computer[citation needed]. This should be replaced with the same sentence with the correct date and a reference. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:07, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quite correct. The Sad Mac was there from Day 1. Fewer hex digits on the older machines. Of course, I can't put that in because it's from my own knowledge of actually BEING AROUND AT THE TIME AND SEEING THE SAD MAC, and that's original research. Nybbler (talk) 18:20, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I found the following information on http://technologizer.com/2008/09/18/errormessage/5/ which appears to be real first-hand information about this ;-)


Start quote----------------

  1. Dave Small Says:

September 24th, 2008 at 11:56 pm

You wrote, “The Sad Mac has such a strong flavor of early Macintosh-ishness that it’s easy to develop a false memory that it was part of the platform from the beginning in 1984. Nope–Wikipedia says it first appeared in 1987.”

I’m sorry, I really am, because you made an effort to doublecheck your story, but it looks like Wikipedia is about to get a strong argument from me.

I happen to know this code very, very, *very* well, since I had to adapt it to another computer, with a larger screen size. The Mac screen was 64 bytes wide. The Atari ST screen was 80 bytes wide. So, to make a vertical line on the Mac, you’d move a dot to screen memory, add 64, and move another dot to screen memory, etc. I had to fixup ==all== those 64’s to 80’s so they’d work on the Atari. So let’s say I spent waaaaaaaaaaaay too many hours documenting this code up, down, and sideways, while listening (the horror!) to Neil Young Live Rust!. If I seem a little twitchy about this … well …a case could be made for that point of view.

I had to fix every single frowney, smiley, disk-shaped, ?, X, or what ever Mac icon. I truly do know them all.

In the 64K original (1984) Mac ROMs, of which I have a printout sitting on my lap *right at this moment*, Wikipedia or not, you positively WILL find:

The “Draw a Sad Mac and Do An Error Code Onscreen” at routine BadMac, $4000F4. In that routine, you’ll find the BRAnch to DrawSadMac at $400118, which returns via the address in A6. It then draws numeric codes. You will then find the numeric images of the codes at “numimages” at $40017A. To nail this point down with a hammer, the actual code that *puts them onto the display* is a MOVE.B D5,(A2), at $400146. It’s part of several loops. The system then has its interrupts turned off ($400168) and loops forever to $40016C.

DrawSadMac is invoked in a variety of places. The most famous is the “Dire Straits” Alert Code (a.k.a. the “DsErrCode”). Of course, “Dire Straits” is not what the programmers originally named it; this is a real-bad-news code, the computer is in deep s—. They try to handle it gracefully. But if the system can’t do stuff like an InitGraf, InitPort, and PlotIcon, oh well, it jumps off to BadMac documented above, and BadMac is just not a happy place to go.

Routine DrawSadMac ($4007CC) is combined with other routines, like DrawMac, and DrawHappyMac, that all use common drawing code, but use different images.

This code is directly followed by the images for BlankMac ($40080C), then for other things, like:

DiskIcon ($400870), MacSmile ($4008A0), MacFrown ($4008B4), QuesMark($4008C8), and XMark ($4008E6).

I suppose it’ll become tediously necessary for me to decode the number images into Mac screen images to convince the Wikipedia people that gee, the 64K ROMs had this stuff.

I would like to say that the people who wrote these ROMs taught me 68000 programming, in particular, Andy Hertzfeld. The man is a master and I was an apprentice looking over his shoulder. He taught me so many things that I can’t begin to describe them all. He’s a genius.

I hope this puts this stuff about “You had to go to the 128K ROMs to get the certain Mac startup faces” to bed. Because … I also “did” the 128’s, and that printout, too, is around . . .

Thanks for tolerating my twitchiness.

Take care,

Dave Small


end quote---------------- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.66.132 (talk) 12:56, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Red "of" death : Screen vs Ring (RSOD vs RROD)[edit]

I don't think much. If you compare Red Screen of Death and Red Ring of Death, that is different.

In Windows Longhorn boot error, use RSOD. In XBOX 360 error, use RROD.

Should we compare them ? Junkcops (talk) 01:24, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The sections are already different with Red Screen of Death referencing to Red Screen of Death. Also, one is at the top of the article, while the other is at much lower of the article (though this article does require a little restructuring, including the pending mergers with other screens of death). Also, I don't quite see what is there to be compared. One is hardware based, and shows up as a ring (clearly shown by a nice picture), while the other is red screen (clearly seen by a nice picture), and shows up as a screen. Aly89 (talk) 02:26, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Kill Screen[edit]

Should Kill Screen be added into article? I think it in the "Screens of Death" category.Junkcops (talk) 23:26, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting[edit]

This article needs to have some formatting done to it. Starting with the Purple section, there seems to be a lot of unnecessary white space. Sections that I feel need to be revised: Purple, Green (An image of the actual screen would be good too), and the sad tab. Deathwish644 22:25, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

This page is a mess.[edit]

Looking at this page, it's poorly written in some parts and it talks about irrelevant things like a failure mode in an obscure IE shell. This page should only contain things that actually are close to the classical BSOD: that is, critical operating system failures. --71.220.35.140 (talk) 10:41, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My bold edit got reverted by a bot[edit]

I've once made a bold edit to this article, with an intention to suggest how it should look like, but it got reverted by User:ClueBot before any human could read it. I can't report it, as the reports page is semi-protected. Please read and consider reverting it back (or at least reusing some ideas). Thanks, Ian (87.205.182.113 (talk) 15:54, 27 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Because your edit has been reverted as a suspected vandalism. The Junk Police (reports|works) 03:36, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nintendo DS[edit]

I don't see a reason to have Nintendo DS on here. These are not exactly "screens of death", but more a firmware revision indicator. The first verison of the DS, simply crashes when doing the Pictochat procedure. Later revisions change color to identify which version it's running. Weaselboy246 (talk) 21:46, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any reason the DS is included 3 times?76.240.164.166 (talk) 07:59, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is what I was going to say. It's not a "crash" screen, but a version indicator. DanielDPeterson + talk 02:13, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup[edit]

I've been looking at this article for a while and I'm finally motivated to clean it up. I am going to take out all of the sections that, in my opinion, are not screens of death. The criteria will be that of the intro paragraph: a screen of death is a fatal error displayed by an operating system. I will be starting with this revision and will move sections I remove to Talk:Screens of death/Removed sections for now. --Chris (talk) 15:47, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PS3 Yellow Light of Death?[edit]

How sad. Xbox 360 fan boys make up a fake error and it actually makes it to Wikipedia? Come to think of it, most of the people who edit articles here ARE idiots. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spartan9199 (talkcontribs) 19:54, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you read WP:CIVIL. Thanks. --Chris (talk) 19:56, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tell that to the people who bash the PS3 here and make up errors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spartan9199 (talkcontribs) 19:59, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing uncivil about the text in the current article. Also, I would suggest searching Google before accusing people of fabricating information. It suggests, quite strongly, that it is in fact a real OS-level panic due to malfunctioning hardware. Do you have any evidence you can link to that suggests this is a hoax? --Chris (talk) 20:02, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How ironic. You're asking me to google it but the section iself has NO citation.

"is in fact a real OS-level panic due to malfunctioning hardware."- RELIABLE source please? As in an official statement by Sony, not Google. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spartan9199 (talkcontribs) 20:23, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, you seem to have put words in my mouth. Not once did I say "this error should be in the article." The points I was trying to make to you are as follows:
  1. You are acting in an uncivil manner. You seem to be under the impression that I (or the article contributors) are somehow attacking you. I assure you this is not the case. There is no need for the combative tone.
  2. The "fake" error you are claiming was created by "fan boys" in an attempt to "bash the PS3" seems to be... well, not fake at all. Unless you are considering the Google results to be manufactured by these same "Xbox 360 fan boys."
Now, on to actually improving the article in question: depending on what sources you consider reliable in the area of game hardware, this article at least mentions its existence and may be borderline appropriate as a ref. --Chris (talk) 20:35, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have inserted the ref as a citation for the first sentence, which simply asserts the existence of this error condition. The other sentences in the section should be cited as well. --Chris (talk) 20:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see no citation at all.

Spartan9199 (talk) 20:48, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is a small [7] after the first sentence. This scrolls your browser window to the appropriate footnote. --Chris (talk) 20:49, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see a link to an opinion, not an official statement.Spartan9199 (talk) 20:51, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Let me know when you are done being combative and we will continue this discussion. --Chris (talk) 20:53, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]


I'm asking you for something simple and you are giving me nothing. Spartan9199 (talk) 20:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Yellow Light of Death" section deleted.[edit]

I deleted it due to lacking of reliable sources which made the section, as a whole, irrelevant.

-Spartan9199 (talk) 03:13, 8 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete?[edit]

I agree with the notice at the top - the whole page should be removed. 82.33.8.12 (talk) 21:12, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

DAB[edit]

I have converted the article to a sort of DAB page per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Screens of death. I have attempted to keep all sourced content. Throw something back in if I missed it. (With sources, of course.) --Chris (talk) 17:10, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

yellow screen of death[edit]

The citation for "yellow screen of death" as a parser error in XML documents links to this page, which, if you search the linked page for information on the yellow screen of death, you'll find that it doesn't mention anything about parse errors, but rather links directly back to the wikipedia entry. Therefore, this wikipedia page cites itself in this instance. I have removed that piece of information from the article. 147.126.81.41 (talk) 18:59, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Screen of Death[edit]

Windows 8 and 10 forcibly retain DWM even when host crashes, resulting in a SoD that is colored according to currently selected "main color". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.173.12.68 (talk) 16:02, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Switch screen of death[edit]

The Nintendo Switch appears to have a blank orange screen of death, though I'm not sure if or where to add this.

Dead Link[edit]

the yellow screen of death links to a dead link 2600:4040:A988:5D00:684B:4F9D:7B04:3280 (talk) 23:28, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]