History of the BSOD (Windows 3.1 - 11)

this video has been sponsored by nordpass hey what's going on everyone today in this video i'm going to be talking about the history of the windows blue screen of death or bsod for short it's also known as a stop error or a bug check and this screen indicates that the windows os can no longer function safely due to a fatal system error the use of a bsod has been around since windows 3.1 and has changed in design up to the present era with windows 11. but before we start let's go to our sponsor nord pass if you have an issue with having too many passwords to memorize or want to avoid identity theft nord passes a program that allows you to store all your passwords in one place without any need to memorize them it has an auto fill feature which means you can log in faster without the need to type anything you can generate secure passwords shop and browse faster with securely storing credit card details and you can use the same account on up to six devices which is great for convenience nordpass also has a data breach scanner and it's zero knowledge meaning no one including the nor pass team can see what's in your encrypted vault feel free to purchase nor pass with my discount code below now we can start with the earliest bsods which involve dos based versions of windows in windows 3.1 a bsod can be generated when an application is frozen the user would try to press control or delete and as a result this blue screen would appear with multiple options such as returning to windows force closing the application in question or forced restarting your computer with windows 95 and windows 98 there are four main blue screens that can appear during the usage of the system the first one is known as an exception which means the os may still be able to run normally although that's not the case in reality a fatal exception however means game over not only will the current program be terminated but the os would be too unstable to run which would lead to the warning bsod and if you press ctrl alt delete you'll be greeted with the system as busy bsod instead of the normal close program dialog box in windows millennium also known as windows me you would get this specific bsod which tells you an error has occurred with an error code at the bottom of the screen now when it comes to windows versions with the nt kernel bsods are more commonly known as stop errors in windows nt 3m4 the stop code would be at the top of the screen which is used to indicate the direct cause of the system crash these stop codes also usually have text with technicians can use to identify the issue and whether a system driver was direct cause of it the stack trace is also displayed along with the list of drivers that have been loaded during the run time of the system at the bottom of the bsod there's a prompt that tells you to restart your computer and advises you to run a debugger should the crash happen again this bsod isn't as user-friendly as later versions but you must remember that windows nt 3 and 4 were intended for professional workstations not home users with the release of windows 2000 the introduction of a vga driver for the kernel at startup means the bsod is now shown in 680 by 480 graphics mode instead of text mode early versions of windows 2000 had to crash grain with a black background however by the time the os reached public release it was back to blue with white text the windows 2000 bs 30 stands out because it is the first to provide detailed instructions to the end user on what to do upon seeing the screen for example it mentions that if this is the first time you've seen the screen you can simply restart your computer and if it happens again steps are provided to further diagnose the issue depending on the stop code with the early development releases of windows xp the bsod becomes more user-friendly with the first lines that says a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer this was carried on to the final release of windows xp and it was also used in windows vista and windows 7. the stop code has been moved to the bottom of the screen as well there are two other common variants of this type of blue screen the first one is where the stop code starts with a c instead of a zero such as this one which tells you exactly what happened and that the system has been shut down the second one is a normal stop code but because it happens so early on during system startup the os isn't able to display any of the other text just the bare minimum in early versions of windows 8 such as build 7850 the bsod had the same text as windows 7 however it was now in a higher screen resolution specifically 1.024x768 this didn't last long however as microsoft decided to move towards a black screen that simply said your computer needs to restart with only the error code and no additional information about the crash such as in build 7955 in windows 8 build 8045 we are introduced to the first version of the sad face bsod where the system tells you that your pc ran into a problem and that it needs to restart the numerical stop code is replaced with a text version which you can search online the background has been changed to blue in windows 8 build 8102 which is the official developer preview while the text remained the same with the consumer preview version of windows 8 specifically build 8250 it continued this trend with very similar wording with the public release of windows 8 this is what the bsod looked like and it mentioned specifically that it's collecting error info for a crash dump and then the system would automatically restart just like the beta versions the tech stop code is at the bottom of the screen which you can further research online this bsod was carried on to windows 8.1 and early official versions of windows 10. in windows 10 version 1607 the bsod introduced a qr code which a user could scan on their phone this would open microsoft support website on their phone for more information about the specific stop code displayed on the pc there's also a website link shown on the pc where you can learn more about the crash one thing that i've noticed with this crash screen is that if automatic reboot is enabled which is usually by default the last part of the main crash text would say will restart for you if automatic reboot is disabled it will just say you can restart instead this was continued on to windows 10 version 2004 but instead of your pc at the beginning it now says your device with the initial release of windows 11 the brzody has once again changed to a black color which remained the case until the introduction of windows 11 build 2200.318 where the color was once again changed to a darker blue the text however remains the same one thing that i haven't mentioned yet is that with insider preview versions of windows 10 and windows 11 the bsod has a green background and it mentions that your windows insider build crashed everything else however remains the same the final bsod that we will look at is the windows 8 to 11 early startup crash this bsod would occur so early in system startup that instead of displaying the sad face it's simply a black screen that says your pc needs to restart and you would have to manually power off the device the error code is shown along with parameters and no crash dump is created because it's not possible to do it so that was a video showing the history of the windows blue screen of death and how it's changed from windows 3.1 up to windows 11. thank you all for watching and see you all in my next video you

Channel: Nobel Tech

Views: 12,478

Keywords: Windows BSOD, Windows BSOD history, History of the BSOD, Windows Crash Screens, Windows Blue Screen, Windows Blue Screen of Death, Windows BSOD Story

Id: nYQIzF85k6E

Length: 8min 13sec (493 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 02 2022