What Causes a 'Blue Screen' Crash?

Dave tracks down the original developer responsible for the very first Windows Bluescreen, plus how to make your machine Bluescreen in other colors.

00:00 - Introduction
01:12 - What is a Bluescreen?
02:00 - A Famous Windows 98 Bluescreen
03:15 - Forza Bluescreens
04:00 - What causes a Bluescreen?
05:30 - Should You be able to Continue?
07:00 - It's a Driver's Fault!
08:45 - Bluescreens Over Time
09:40 - SteveB's Contribution
10:28 - Searching for JVert
12:30 - A Singular Father
13:35 - It's Caerulean, Dummy!
14:50 - LIVESTREAM info
15:12 - Redscreen

I get a lot of questions about which keyboard I'm using as well as various other camera and studio equipment questions, so here are the highlights:

CORSAIR K70 RGB MK.2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard (Cherry MX Blue Switches)

Sony FX3 or A7SIII Cameras

Aputure 120D Mark II Light and Light Dome II Mini

Glide Gear TMP100 Prompter

[heftyjo]

As a support technician this is actually a big help for me. I get a lot of customer that ask me, "Why is the screen blue?". Now I can take a deep breath and proceed to tell them a 30 minute story. I'm sure they'll love that....

[MidnightSt]

"You can boot, code, and crash, all in the same color scheme!"
Shame this was never used as a marketing blurb, it's great.

[Vryan]

I recall with Windows 95 seeing the "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" message every so often. I especially recall a funny story of my aunt seeing that message and worried that the police were coming.

[Zebra_M]

Damn. I used to be thoroughly amused how unplugging my USB headset adapter used to sometimes BSOD my work laptop, blaming Windows for letting an audio driver kill the system - and while I came here to learn 'why blue', I learned that this scenario is actually very reasonable and even desirable to prevent damage. Well played.

[sergheiadrian]

"You can boot, code and crash all in the same color scheme".

[pureventrue]

Got to 11:15 (wrong John Vert) & just about shit myself laughing. Can we all just take a moment to appreciate this mans comedic genius as well as his brilliant technical mind? Thank you Dave. Deep dives & peeks behind the curtain can be incredibly dry at times but you have such an amazing capacity for storytelling that you somehow keep everything digestible. You're a gem.

[zippity]

Sometimes the YouTube algorithm has pretty on-point comedic timing

[thatpitter]

“past end of life support”
*XP Shutdown sound*
P e r f e ct

[sysghost]

When Windows installers where simply white text on blue, I used to joke about it:
It begins with a blue screen and it ends with a blue screen.

[smokedice]

Yeah, a “small bug” in the kernel could potentially destroy the entire computer and make it unrecoverable depending on where it happened

[jackbust]

Got a bluescreen while watching this video, no joke.

[Barnacules]

Long time no see stranger, I doubt you remember me since we didn't overlap much. I worked in the 3549 super lab in Building 26 and moved down the hallway to an office for 15 years 2000-2015. I believe I filed a few bugs against Task Manager (not sure if it was while you were there) as (jrberg). Nice to see other Microsofties putting down roots on YouTube 👍

[maltardraco]

Blue Screen = Seizure
Green Screen = Hard Drive Failure
Red Screen = OS Death
Purple Screen = VM Death
Black Screen = No Power

[osominor]

As a CS major with a passion for programming and computers, this channel is a gold mine!

[richard-davies]

Bill really handled that BSOD pretty well. Considering the insane amount of hardware and driver combinations there are these days it's amazing how stable Windows is.

[vkfbab]

In the late 90s I was doing a power point presentation at university to a bunch of my programming students. Running 95 or 98. I had inserted a slide that was the image of the blue screen. They all laughed at my crash displaying on the projector. I then advanced to the next screen to their amazement. Tricked even the smartest students.

[robertkopp]

Actually, the use of a blue screen predates computer era, back to the TV broadcast era. (I was there). It was standard practice to display all blue screen to indicate a faulty video feed. Every colour screen (then) was a cathode ray tube. Every tube had 3 “guns” streaming electrons beams through a vacuum to strike the screen array of pixels, made up of red, blue and green glowing material. It was arranged that a loss of the incoming video drive signal to the CRT would turn on only the “blue gun”. This alerted instantly “the humans”, that the video feed to that screen had failed. Just image the frenzy in the video control room at a broadcasting station when all 12 display monitors turn blue during a live show... There was no Googling for help info in those days!

[skytechbits]

Taking me back in time Dave 😏 We called it, "Blue Screen of Death" long before the internet existed. As far as printer, or any other peripheral installs, the manufacturers created their setup program to be installed before the printer was allowed to be plugged in so that Windows would not take over with Microsoft drivers. Thanks for sharing your stories. You make them fun to listen to Dave.

[awesomelink]

Very comedic timing, YouTube, recommending this to me today.

[sysghost]

13:01 - Now comes the question we all need the answer too: Why was the MIPS RISC box firmware screen blue?