{"id":110062,"date":"2024-07-30T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=110062"},"modified":"2024-07-30T11:46:46","modified_gmt":"2024-07-30T18:46:46","slug":"20240730-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20240730-00\/?p=110062","title":{"rendered":"There is no mystery over who wrote the Blue Screen of Death, despite what some may want you to believe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Somehow, there is a claim of a 30-year mystery surrounding Microsoft’s Blue Screen of Death<\/a>. The argument goes that there are three conflicting sources of authorship: Steve Ballmer, John Vert, and me.<\/p>\n

But really, there is no conflict. There are three different blue-colored screens, and each has a different author.<\/p>\n

First is the Windows 3.1 Ctrl<\/kbd>+Alt<\/kbd>+Del<\/kbd> screen<\/a>, which is a blue screen of unhappiness, not death:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Contoso Deluxe Music Composer<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0
\n\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0This Windows application has stopped responding to the system.
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0*\u00a0 Press ESC to cancel and return to Windows.
\n\u00a0\u00a0*\u00a0 Press ENTER to close this application that is not responding.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You will lose any unsaved information in this application.
\n\u00a0\u00a0*\u00a0 Press CTRL+ALT+DEL again to restart your computer. You will
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 lose any unsaved information in all applications.<\/p>\n
\u00a0
\n\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The text for this message was written by Steve Ballmer. (He didn’t write the code to display the message; he just wrote the text that goes into the message.)<\/p>\n

Windows 3.1 did not have a blue screen of death. If Windows crashed, you got what could anachronistically be called a black screen of death<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Could not continue running Windows because of paging error.
\n\u00a0
\nC:\\>_ \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Next is the Windows 95 kernel error, which you could consider a “blue screen of death”, although Windows 95 lets you ignore the error, so it’s not a true death. (Then again, there’s no guarantee that ignoring the error will return you to a usable system.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Windows\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\n\u00a0<\/div>\n
An exception 0D has occurred at 0028:80014812 in VxD CONTOSO(03) + 00000152. This was called from 0028:80014C34 in VxD CONTOSO(03) + 00000574. It may be possible to continue normally.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
* Press any key to attempt to continue.<\/div>\n
* Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart your computer. You will<\/div>\n
\u00a0 lose any unsaved information in all applications.<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I was the one who brought this version of the Windows 95 kernel error blue screen message to its final form. (Some people have misidentified an early version of it as a Windows NT blue screen<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The third blue screen of death is the Windows NT kernel error, and that’s the one authored by John Vert<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
*** STOP: 0x00000019 (0x00000000,0xC00E0FF00xFFFFEFD4,0xC0000000)
\nBAD_POOL_HEADER<\/p>\n

eax=ffdff13c ebx=80089a10 ecx=08000800 edx=ff69bf60 esi=80088010 edi=8008b0f0
\neip=801b9da5 esp=ff69bb8c ebp=e10076c8 \u00a0p4=0002 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 nv up ei ng nz na po nc
\ncr0=80050039 cr2=e1053002 cr3=00030000 cr4=00000000 irql:0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0efl=ff69bb84
\ngdtr=80036000 \u00a0 gdtl=03ff idtr=80036400 \u00a0 idtl=07ff tr=0028 \u00a0ldtr=0000<\/p>\n

Dll Base DateStmp – Name \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Dll Base DateStmp – Name
\n80100000 2c921d20 – ntoskrnl.exe \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 80400000 2c7d4b45 – hal.dll
\n80010000 2c360942 – Atdisk.sys \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 80001000 2c87e0ab – Ftdisk.sys
\n801e6000 2c42f49a – Fastfat.sys<\/p>\n

Address dword dump \u00a0 Build [v1.528] \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0– Name
\nff69bbb8 80121efa 80121efa ff7b6c50 00000018 00000000 ff69bba8 – ntoskrnl.exe
\nff69bc04 80115b00 80115b00 00000100 ff7b19b0 ff7a86a8 ff7a8730 – ntoskrnl.exe
\nff69bc28 80115f67 80115f67 ff7b2600 00000246 80112beb 80190001 – ntoskrnl.exe
\nff69bc34 80112beb 80112beb 80190001 00000246 80112beb 80190001 – ntoskrnl.exe
\nff69bc38 80190001 80190001 00000246 80112beb 80190001 00000000 – ntoskrnl.exe
\nff69bc40 80112beb 80112beb 80190001 00000000 e1007560 e0075688 – ntoskrnl.exe<\/p>\n

Restart your computer. If this message reappears, do not restart.
\nContact your system administrator or technical support group, and\/or
\nperipheral device vendor.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

This is a true “blue screen of death”: The system is unrecoverably dead at this point.<\/p>\n

So we have the following table:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
OS<\/th>\nAuthor<\/th>\nRelease year<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Windows 3.1<\/td>\nSteve Ballmer (text)<\/td>\n1992<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Windows 95<\/td>\nends with me\u00b9<\/td>\n1995<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Windows NT<\/td>\nJohn Vert<\/td>\n1993<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\u00b9 I did not write the early version of the Windows 95 blue screen message, but I was the one who brought it to its final form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No real contradictions in anybody’s story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-110062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-history"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

No real contradictions in anybody’s story.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}