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View Full Version : Have you ever seen a Windows Blue Screen of Death? (BSOD)



user1397
April 19th, 2007, 02:13 AM
If so, how many?

Were they one of the reasons you switched to linux?

Was there ever one that rendered your PC useless? (I have had one that bad)

As for my record, I have seen a total of 3 on my computer, and 2 on my dad's computer (both PCs are Windows XP)

On My last one, I had to reinstall windows, because nothing I did would make my windows boot normally...

rai4shu2
April 19th, 2007, 02:23 AM
A few years ago, I would see a BSoD on a daily basis. I'd say I've seen it about 500 to 1000 times.

deadlydeathcone
April 19th, 2007, 02:24 AM
Basically the question seems to be... have you used a computer?

Back before nt-based versions of Windows became the rage I honestly averaged about two BSODs a day. :popcorn:

As for the other question, no, my reasons lie elsewhere.

chakkaradeep
April 19th, 2007, 02:25 AM
Back when I was using ME, I used to BSoD on a daily basis :)

MellonCollie
April 19th, 2007, 02:26 AM
I had a grand total of 2 on XP from launch day until February this year (thanks to some sound card drivers), but I'm still waiting on my first on Vista.

y6FgBn)~v
April 19th, 2007, 02:27 AM
Back in my network admin days I saw them on a daily basis.

chakkaradeep
April 19th, 2007, 02:28 AM
I had a grand total of 2 on XP from launch day until February this year (thanks to some sound card drivers), but I'm still waiting on my first on Vista.

Using Vista quite a long time, havent see BSoD yet....:(

FuturePilot
April 19th, 2007, 02:29 AM
Yeah, I saw one just a while ago. And yes, it basically rendered everything useless as it wouldn't boot. Had to reinstall since I had no clue what the problem was.:mad:

Nils Olav
April 19th, 2007, 02:33 AM
Using Vista quite a long time, havent see BSoD yet....:(

Why is that a bad thing?

chakkaradeep
April 19th, 2007, 02:35 AM
Why is that a bad thing?

Its Microsoft ! and if not them, who will give back my BSoD days ! :lolflag:

starcraft.man
April 19th, 2007, 02:37 AM
LOL, after being with windows since DOS days... I have seen WAYYYYY too many BSoD's, hopefully I will never see another.

Quillz
April 19th, 2007, 02:38 AM
I've only seen the BSOD maybe 5-10 times. It's never been fatal.

FoolsGold
April 19th, 2007, 02:39 AM
Using Vista quite a long time, havent see BSoD yet....:(
I have, though it was because I was trying to force-install a version of Alcohol 120% that wasn't designed for Vista, and was already known to have compatability issues. I don't blame Vista/MS for that.

I do blame Vista/MS for explorer being able to crash ON DEMAND in certain cases, just by doing simple things you would assume were trivial. For example, if I tried to install a shared printer on the network and asked Vista to do a scan of all printers, it would crash explorer. This was reproducible too. After a while it started working again, but man, it wasn't a good sign.

TheRingmaster
April 19th, 2007, 02:41 AM
Yes, I have had 1 and I said: "windows couldn't find system folder" LMAO

forcesofhabit
April 19th, 2007, 02:43 AM
I haven't seen any when I used XP... not that I didn't have a slew of other problems that came up.

I've had a good amount back when '98 was around.

Funny enough, my brother is trying to upgrade to Vista as I type this, and had one during the final configuration of the install. Which failed!:lolflag:

Dyegov
April 19th, 2007, 02:54 AM
I saw it plenty of times when I was using windows 98, some times using windows 2000 and never using windows xp. However, tomorrow my computer will be a happy Feisty Fawn and I will lose any opportunity to see that page again (thankfully) :)

Hex_Mandos
April 19th, 2007, 02:59 AM
I used to see them every day when I used 95 and 98. On XP I don't remember ever seeing one, though I might. XP crashes just kill one process most of the time... though a bad process can slow the system to unbearable levels.

lastexyle
April 19th, 2007, 03:14 AM
Back on ME I used to get tons of blue screens. I've gotten quite a few on XP too, but 100% of them were related to hardware failure of some sort.

Sunflower1970
April 19th, 2007, 03:24 AM
XP had a few here and there from time to time, but Windows 98...man...I think I got one of those almost daily

Neo0351
April 19th, 2007, 03:30 AM
I never really saw the BSoD until i started using XP, then it was all the time. Not to mention a host of other problems like IE crashing all the time. Then one day my computer would just turn off. Come to find out it was overheating. I've had Ubuntu for about a month now and so far it hasn't overheated once. And only when I upgraded to Feisty did it even get warm.

futz
April 19th, 2007, 03:30 AM
If so, how many?
Dozens. Been using ******* a long time. They're not common, but it happens sometimes.


Were they one of the reasons you switched to linux?
No.


Was there ever one that rendered your PC useless? (I have had one that bad)
No. Never.


On My last one, I had to reinstall windows, because nothing I did would make my windows boot normally...
Had one beauty once. No idea how it happened, but the partition table got wiped out. I had to type it back in by hand (for something like 8 partitions) with a hex editor. Needless to say, that was rather difficult. Didn't have to reinstall and didn't lose any data - 100% recovery.

ceil420
April 19th, 2007, 05:06 AM
I saw it all the time in Windows 98/ME, and every once in a while on 2000. I never got a BSOD in XP Home or Pro, but on my stepdad's computer, if he's logged in and I try to log in to my mom's account, the computer would restart. No idea why. Don't care enough to ask him about it.

riven0
April 19th, 2007, 06:57 AM
Good thread. It was the ever present BSOD that pushed me to Linux. Two months before I switched over, I used to get the stop error every day, along with the reinstalls I was doing every week or so. Surprisingly, ME wasn't as bad as XP for me, and that's saying a lot.

macogw
April 19th, 2007, 07:17 AM
Of course. I saw it at least a dozen times on the old Win-95 box, probably more than that. Dad's g/f's comp did it a few times a day. The XP box never has a BSOD, it just reboots randomly...because MS got sick of the BSOD being made fun of and being too "scary" so now some versions of XP restart instead. I saw one a few weeks ago on a friend's laptop and yanked the partition's contents into the Ubuntu partition (cuz Windows couldn't finish booting, but Ubuntu was fine), copied from there to another box, and reinstalled Ubuntu without a Windows partition. Hey, it fixed her computer.

Tsen
April 19th, 2007, 07:20 AM
I saw about one per month on the old Win 95 box. Got a lot of stop errors on this compy using XP, but no BSODs.

karellen
April 19th, 2007, 07:23 AM
:lolflag: of course. back to the old Win98 they were pretty common. in XP I think I so 1 or 2...that's all

riven0
April 19th, 2007, 07:25 AM
Of course. I saw it at least a dozen times on the old Win-95 box, probably more than that. Dad's g/f's comp did it a few times a day. The XP box never has a BSOD, it just reboots randomly...because MS got sick of the BSOD being made fun of and being too "scary" so now some versions of XP restart instead.

You can still get the BSOD in XP instead of just restarting: If you remove the checkmark next to Automatic Recovery under System Failure, it'll give you the stop error instead. A lot more useful in troubleshooting a problem... though not in my case.

happy-and-lost
April 19th, 2007, 07:27 AM
Few in XP, and one the first time I used Vista

Lord Illidan
April 19th, 2007, 07:32 AM
I've seen quite a few in school on XP.

At my computer, on XP, not so much though. On 98...haha...hundreds!

Spr0k3t
April 19th, 2007, 09:20 AM
Every day I see at least five. There was one great time in my life that a joke was well played through my place of employment... at 4:01PM on April Fool's Day last year, every computer system in the establishment went to BSoD. I'm talking about 800+ computer systems here, and it was a real BSoD, not some screensaver/wallpaper type thing. I wish I had a camera that day.

lalakis85
April 19th, 2007, 09:23 AM
Yes, i saw many, is the definite winner...

derjames
April 19th, 2007, 09:27 AM
I saw a lot of them in 2000pro, ME, 98 and 95 but surprisingly none in XP...

Bezmotivnik
April 19th, 2007, 09:39 AM
It was chronic, pre-W2000.

I saw so many BSODs in Win98/SE/ME that I was forced to try Linux.

I don't think I've seen a BSOD once in W2000 or XP except a couple of times when I had a loose AGP card.

Dirty Ole
April 19th, 2007, 09:45 AM
It popped up like screensaver in 98 but in XP it was only because of a 3rd grade USB Modem driver the ISP gave me.

So it turns out that I have seen too many to count them.

sloggerkhan
April 19th, 2007, 09:47 AM
Never had one on my on PC (when it had windows). But seen plenty in computer labs. I had a sad mac once way back in the day, though. Bet not many people have seen those now. (Or are they still around in OSX?)

jon1984
April 19th, 2007, 10:13 AM
I don't know if you saw it. But theres a video on google video search i found comparing ubuntu and windows vista. its basically some kid clicking around his desktop in both operating systems, and using beryl to show off some of ubuntus visual superiorities, that leaves vista stone cold at the start line. In the end of the kids video, he incorporates a part of a segment that was Bill gates, and an assistant at the Windows 98 showcase. Where he was demoing it live, a few days before it came out, in front of a audience on stage, and on live tv. And while he's showing it. He's showing some driver advantage to windows, how it can recognize hardware that you plug into usb. And all of a sudden poop.. the blue screen comes up. You hear the audience roar, And bill looks at his associate... as if to quickly solve the problem, and gather the audience. Bills associate just laughed. It was quite the memorable experience, I'll see if I can find a link.

Ok here is.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ This Might not be the link, i can't watch the video, as the flash player plugins aren't installed on my modzilla yet. But im pretty sure that's it. Take a looky, its the last few seconds.

The blue screen never got me riled up though. I have no vendetta against windows. I just love ubuntu.

the.dark.lord
April 19th, 2007, 10:18 AM
]If so, how many?
Yep, millions. i used Win ME for 6 years.

Were they one of the reasons you switched to linux?
No.

Was there ever one that rendered your PC useless? (I have had one that bad)
Nope, one had me reformat the HD though.

As for my record, I have seen a total of 3 on my computer, and 2 on my dad's computer (both PCs are Windows XP)

On My last one, I had to reinstall windows, because nothing I did would make my windows boot normally..

guitarmaniac
April 19th, 2007, 10:29 AM
I've had too many to remember. XP was so incredibly crap (especially on the 128MB, 400MHz computer I was using).
I can't believe I used to enjoy using it when I first started using computers.
Now it just makes me feel like I'm in a room too small to stand up or lie down in.

jon1984
April 19th, 2007, 07:48 PM
I've had too many to remember. XP was so incredibly crap (especially on the 128MB, 400MHz computer I was using).
I can't believe I used to enjoy using it when I first started using computers.
Now it just makes me feel like I'm in a room too small to stand up or lie down in.

slackware on that, would be buttery fine.

cormic
April 19th, 2007, 08:20 PM
I have seen hundreds of bluescreens. Part of the job when I was a server engineer. Moved to networks and now I just see tracebacks on Cisco routers :)

vitalik
April 19th, 2007, 08:30 PM
Yep and many fresh installs after that:lolflag: .

beercz
April 20th, 2007, 01:17 AM
LOL, after being with windows since DOS days... I have seen WAYYYYY too many BSoD's, hopefully I will never see another.
I know exactly where you are coming from!!

I have had a gut full, and quite a few of mine have been serious enough to warrant a reformat. Good job I take very regular backups (daily in fact), and I have plenty of time to install all the software, drivers, updates, do all the necessary configuring, firewall, anti-spyware, anti-virus etc etc and then restore the data.

After 3 days I have the machine running again, just in time for the next BSOD.

Sooooooo frustrating - give me linux any day.

RAV TUX
April 20th, 2007, 01:21 AM
I have never personally experienced the BSoD...I have only heard rumors and seen pictures posted online.

AusIV4
April 20th, 2007, 01:27 AM
I once had a computer that would BSOD a few hours after a cold boot, but after a cold boot, you could reboot it and it would run fine all day. I've gotten them a few times on other computers, but that one was like old faithful.

bukwirm
April 20th, 2007, 02:02 AM
I used Windows ME for a couple of years - I've gotten too many BSOD's to count.

Hendrixski
April 20th, 2007, 02:49 AM
I have never personally experienced the BSoD...I have only heard rumors and seen pictures posted online.

lucky you.

I didn't get them that frequently. I would bsod when I did certain things (like remove a disc without properly ejecting, or stuff like that) so I just got in the habit of not doing it... Then when I was developing software on Windows XP I would get BSOD's for reasong I have NO IDEA why... but it was rare.

A friend of mine just told be he got a bsod in Vista minutes after buying his new computer.

simonalpha
April 20th, 2007, 05:12 AM
I've experienced one in every Windows, except NT and 2000 (never used them). My favourite was when I was buying a new laptop, and the sales guy was showing me Vista. He went to the start menu, and it BSODed.
My parents' P4 on XP went through a stage of one every time you tried to start up, apparently a HDD error.... funnily enough Ubuntu worked just fine...

mand0
April 20th, 2007, 05:20 AM
Yeah, the year was 1998... I'll never forget it.

testube_babies
April 20th, 2007, 05:24 AM
My XP partition on my old computer BSoD'd every time I booted up and yelled at me for having corrupt memory. But Arch Linux runs fine on it, so who cares.

Polygon
April 20th, 2007, 05:39 AM
the most annoying this is that your playing a game and the game freezes, or causes windows to critical error and you just start hearing a bunch of error noises and then you hear your computer restart (or blue screen if you have that option enabled in xp)

why do programs cause the entire operating system to crash? Silly windows.

and yeah, bsods and windows screwing itself over in general every 4-5 months was one of the reasons i switched to linux

Lepht
April 20th, 2007, 05:52 AM
Only everyday, when I am doing random stuffs such as checking email, opening itunes ans clicking on start...

gizmoarena
April 20th, 2007, 05:55 AM
one of the reasons why i have switched to linux...

have seen BSoD on Vista as well :|

steven8
April 20th, 2007, 06:05 AM
Our first Win95 computer suffered from BSoDs and my boys seem to be able to produce them on their Win98 machine from time to time, but my WinNT 4 machine when I worked at Goodyear was BSoD happy! I and my partner. Their were days when we'd each have 4 or 5 of the little blighters!

JT673
April 20th, 2007, 07:06 AM
No...My router blocks the bad stuff...

Have you seen the Red Screen of Death for Vista Beta 1 yet?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/22/Longhorn_RSoD.png

NikoC
April 20th, 2007, 07:09 AM
Though I voted yes, I have to be honest and mention that I haven't seen one since XP arrived on the scene... when running millennium it was rather exceptional to NOT have a blue screen ;)

spamzilla
April 20th, 2007, 07:37 AM
My brother just bought a laptop from Ebay, and he got the BSOD 4 times before I realised that the seller hadn't seated the ram properly!

Xzallion
April 20th, 2007, 08:18 AM
I have seen far to many Blue Screens of Death, somewhere in the hundreds. I had them on Windows 95, 98SE, ME, 2000, and XP. They were not a reason for me to switch to Linux, as mostly the GUI and free software that linux offered took care of that. The Blue Screen of Death was a big reason my friend switched, his other reason being OpenOffice 2 wasn't available for Windows 98.

steven8
April 20th, 2007, 08:41 AM
My brother just bought a laptop from Ebay, and he got the BSOD 4 times before I realised that the seller hadn't seated the ram properly!

Or it became dislodged during shipment.

Oddly enough, I never experienced a BSoD while running ME. I ran it for about a year, and installed it for other people as well. They never had problems either. Weird.

rajeev1204
April 20th, 2007, 08:48 AM
Though I voted yes, I have to be honest and mention that I haven't seen one since XP arrived on the scene... when running millennium it was rather exceptional to NOT have a blue screen ;)


I agree . Never seen it with XP

king minger
April 20th, 2007, 10:50 AM
More than I'd like to count!
however since XP very few. (loads in 95/98/NT4)
I see a few more at work doing App development, but that's just because i'm a hacky programmer....

I prefer Guru Meditation anyway.... saw those on a very regular basis back inthe day!

wipeout140
April 20th, 2007, 10:52 AM
Back when I was using ME, I used to BSoD on a daily basis :)

Agreed but on Windows XP i had none

compwiz18
April 20th, 2007, 12:03 PM
Using Vista quite a long time, havent see BSoD yet....:(

Aren't you lucky ;) I think Vista must hate me.

AndyCooll
April 20th, 2007, 12:15 PM
Yeah, I see lots of them! Part of my job is fixing computers that are having issues. All our public library pc's use W2K and invariably there's one that has a BSOD.
When I ran Winderz at home I didn't see too many of them, however it did happen occasionally.

:cool:

qpieus
April 20th, 2007, 02:51 PM
Oh yes, numerous times (windows XP).

Iceni
April 20th, 2007, 03:30 PM
I never saw one on windows XP, but many a time on every other windows from 95 to nt4. Besides XP, Win2k and win 3.1 proved the most stable for me.

I've probably seen thousands:)

samjh
April 20th, 2007, 03:33 PM
Last time I remember seeing a BSOD was more than 7 years ago, on a Windows 98 system.

insane_alien
April 20th, 2007, 04:09 PM
i used to keep a tally of how many BSOD's i got. it got a bit ridiculous after the second sheet of A4 so i stopped.

M$LOL
April 20th, 2007, 04:52 PM
I've seen hundreds (thousands?) of the damn things. Why couldn't they be green?

Lster
April 20th, 2007, 05:08 PM
I have seen a couple of BSODs on my laptop. But it is very rare.

On my computer though, the screen often just freezes and I have to reboot. I have a suspicion that the processor was overclocked and that may be the cause?

greymongrey
April 20th, 2007, 05:11 PM
In all the time I ran XP I had like 3 of them. Before that, I had hundreds.

mech7
April 20th, 2007, 06:30 PM
haven't seen one since 98.. 2k and xp are very stable :)

bonzodog
April 20th, 2007, 06:35 PM
The first time I tried to use windows 98, it GPF'd on me. Yes, there is something much worse than a Blue screen of Death - A General protection Fault. A completely black screen, frozen computer with just those three words at the top. Nothing else.
After that, I went to Linux, and have never bothered with Windows since.

Loki-uk
April 21st, 2007, 06:28 PM
I have been running XP MCE and Vista for years and work in IT and to be fair I've never had a BSOD on my PC (last one was in win 95) and the ones I do see are usually caused by a virus........

Windows almost never BSOD's any more......

And I've read loads of posts about kernel panic's so Linux has it's share of software death's too......

I am currently using both and until Linux can lose the terminal, distribute one common set of installer files (not rpm's for red hat .deb's for deban etc,) and those distro's are compiled not source then it will never be able to take windows on. I'm a very experienced computer user who has been using linux a week and it took me a day to find out how to turn my sound card on NO ONE I ASKED COULD GIVE ME A SIMPLE ANSWEER...... after a day the normal users will be returning their goods back to the store.....

Linux is interesting but too complicated for normal users to use.....

In less than a week I've had to recompile the kernel no one should be doing that.....

Loki

rai4shu2
April 21st, 2007, 07:16 PM
I've seen probably close to 1000 BSoDs, but never one due to a virus. In my case it was always "bad drivers" or "bad hardware" causing problems. I've never once seen a kernel panic, despite all the "bad hardware" I'm always trying to use.

Windows has plenty of problems that can only be solved in "cmd.exe" shell, so it can't lose the shell either.

Linux isn't alone in having package variations. Windows has exe files and msi files (and probably a dozen other formats for installing).

super breadfish
April 21st, 2007, 07:43 PM
I've seen BSODs plenty of times, including once when running the Windows repair tool.

mustang
April 21st, 2007, 09:08 PM
Yes, I'm not that young...

argie
April 21st, 2007, 09:36 PM
I've had so many BSODs on the Windows 98 computer it's unbelievable. Quite a lot were due to viruses (transmitted by floppies) but sometimes a lovely fresh install would go blue. A couple of other times it was hardware failure.

Matter of fact, my most recent BSOD was when trying to run VLC on Windows 98 a couple of days ago (my brother has these little games that he likes playing and they're all jerky under wine and Linux). First I get the "System is busy" one for no reason, when I try moving my mouse, then I get the "Warning, system is unstable" one. If I remember right, once upon a time BSODs were hell common around here. Every last one of my computer using friends has gotten so used to BSODs on pre-Windows XP that none would even remark at anyone mentioning one.

I haven't used Windows XP, so I shan't comment.

LookTJ
April 21st, 2007, 09:38 PM
Yes I have seen more than 2000+ all the way back to the Windows 95 days.

mysticrider92
April 21st, 2007, 09:40 PM
I have seen Win 98 and 95 blue screen many, many times, and I am sure there was at least one XP blue screen. Yesterday, I actually had Vista blue screen while using Media Center. None have really messed up the computer, they just force a reboot and large amounts of frustration.

Swab
April 21st, 2007, 09:41 PM
Yesterday, I actually had Vista blue screen while using Media Center.

Was it translucent with tabs? :)

Rutabega
April 21st, 2007, 10:06 PM
I've seen an estimated ten or so in my time. I had the most while using Windows 98.

nphx
April 21st, 2007, 10:11 PM
Too many, lost count since Windows 95. A lot from AOL during the proggie day of punters.

king minger
April 22nd, 2007, 01:47 PM
LOL! haven't seen one in ages on XP and saw one today on shutdown!
this thread jinxed me.....

Efros
April 22nd, 2007, 03:00 PM
Used to be all you needed to get a BSOD was to remove a CD from the drive and then try access it.

AirRaven
April 22nd, 2007, 03:10 PM
Thousands.

95? Five a day.
98? Three a day.
ME? Ten a day.
XP? One a month.

Pikestaff
April 22nd, 2007, 04:22 PM
I saw several, mostly back in my Win '95/'98 days. I don't think XP ever gave me the BSoD, but it did completely freeze and need a hard reboot multiple times, which is close enough :p

(To be fair, Ubuntu also completely freezes on me on occasion, but I get the feeling that it's because I'm doing something wrong, whereas in Windows it was mostly just beyond your control :p)

energiya
April 22nd, 2007, 06:33 PM
1. If so, how many?

2. Were they one of the reasons you switched to linux?

3. Was there ever one that rendered your PC useless? (I have had one that bad)


1. a lot of them!! I used WinME at home and 98/95 at school (back in the old days).
2. NO
3. yes

Can't give more feedback bacause I haven't used Windows at all in the last year. ;)

Kunstar
April 22nd, 2007, 06:39 PM
1. Loads and loads and loads.......

2. Nope

3. Back in the day it absolutely killed Windows 95 on more than three separate occasions over three years lol...what a nightmare - at least it was consistent lol!

gorkur
April 22nd, 2007, 06:52 PM
Saw tons of them on Win98. I upgraded to XP as soon as it was out and one this one time I had the PC on while watching TV. I had no apps running or anything, but when the PC was about to start it's screensaver I got a BSOD. Have had countless BSOD's on XP since (none on this PC tho).

At my previous workplace we used Windows 2000 and I'd sometimes wonder why M$ had bothered making a desktop environment for it instead of just making the damn thing boot directly into the BSOD :lol:

Gmbrdilos
April 22nd, 2007, 07:15 PM
I see a few in school on daily basis, old computer running win 98

Iandefor
April 22nd, 2007, 07:48 PM
I've seen a few working at the American Museum of Radio and Electricity. Like, for instance, when we attempted to run Audiograbber in something other than "Analog" rip mode.

old_geekster
April 22nd, 2007, 07:52 PM
I voted yes, of course.

I have used Microsoft products since the days of MSDOS. For you youngsters,;) those are the days when the command line was all we had to use. There was no GUI interface, period.

You can't possibly use a MS OS that long and not see the BSOD numerous times.

energiya
April 22nd, 2007, 08:27 PM
At my previous workplace we used Windows 2000 and I'd sometimes wonder why M$ had bothered making a desktop environment for it instead of just making the damn thing boot directly into the BSOD :lol:

:lol: :lol:

imon9
April 22nd, 2007, 08:36 PM
on win 3.01... c ant remeber
on win 98 ...countless
on XP ... occasionally especially when something wrong with the stuff i plug into USB...(perhaps i've seen it like 6 times a year?)

vista...no idea, i have no money to BUY a new hardware that can support it

M$LOL
April 22nd, 2007, 08:44 PM
http://www.zombie.org/albums/computers/bsod.jpg

Trenchbroom
April 23rd, 2007, 12:55 AM
My Packard Bell from 1996 used to have a BSOD that would occur every time you ran a DOS program in Windows 95 for exactly 11 minutes. You could time it like clockwork, to the second. So Duke Nukem was a constant juggling act of "Load...shoot...die...shoot...exit". Kept a kitchen timer by the computer to make sure I didn't screw up.

user1397
April 23rd, 2007, 03:00 AM
I am still wondering about the truth of those people who say they've seen "thousandths" or "dozens per day"

to me, that seems improbable, ridiculous, as if that would happen to me, i could not even stare at a computer again for 10 years.

are you guys (that are saying those things) just exaggerating, or are you being 'for real'?

borris.morris
April 23rd, 2007, 03:15 AM
I have seen it numerous times, mostly on XP. It happens when I trade hard drives, or add new hardware.

centy
April 23rd, 2007, 05:07 PM
Used to see the old BSOD quite often during overclocking back in my nooby days. These days it's quite rare to see one now that the drivers for my system are well matured.

haku.spejsr
April 23rd, 2007, 05:13 PM
too many anyway ... even few dreaded screaming blue screens of death :)

jpatton
April 23rd, 2007, 05:22 PM
If so, how many?

Were they one of the reasons you switched to linux?

Was there ever one that rendered your PC useless? (I have had one that bad)

As for my record, I have seen a total of 3 on my computer, and 2 on my dad's computer (both PCs are Windows XP)

On My last one, I had to reinstall windows, because nothing I did would make my windows boot normally...

The last BSOD I saw was pre-Windows XP, I know that sounds strange but I may just be lucky that way ;) I've never had a BSOD that prevented me from recovering my computer, nor have I ever had a BSOD where I needed to reinstall WIndows.

While beta testing Windows Vista they were a regular occurence and at that time there were one or two that did in fact render the computer completely useless and required a re-install to fix them. But, that was beta ;)

I'm currently using Linux on my laptop now because in my job I deal with some various *nix issues and it just makes it easier to move around :)

nsleiman
April 23rd, 2007, 05:36 PM
It was in 1996~7 i was in germany studying elektrotechnik, we had an annoying Visual Basic course, a friend of mine showed me how it was easy to DoS the windows station, it was a c code called teardrop.c or something (cant really remember) it needed just one command to compile (gcc -o) and teardrop xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx was enough to generate that amazing shiny blue screen (port 139 was ready to accept hundreds of characters). actually that was my first work on a solaris (through telnet) after that i inserted a for loop in it and added all IPs in the lab, and each time we had that course i ran a cron for it :) we needed around 10 minutes to restart the PCs and the cron was set for 10 minutes.. i know its lame but i was still young and felt the power being able to shutdown all PCs in less than 2 seconds :)
i regret it now, i hate to be mean.. but that shiny blue screen was tempting me..

roachk71
April 25th, 2007, 04:55 AM
In XP, about three dozen times.

In Win2k, I encountered a BSOD every ten boots, it seems, and after one update, an irrecoverable stop error which moved me away from 2k (this update corrupted an important driver.)

In "Masochist Edition" :lolflag: , too many times to count (along with its terrible memory leaks that kept you from shutting down.)

Far too many times in Win98 and Win95, and

Very seldomly, if at all, on 3.1.

About the only features I liked from Windows were the working standby and hibernation functions. Looking back, though, I can't really say they were too stable, either (sometimes the network would refuse to restart.)

I'm glad this computer no longer runs anything from Redmond. :)

UPDATE: It seems Hibernation now works on this computer. I haven't yet tested Standby, which I'd rather steer clear of.

bootslap
April 26th, 2007, 09:44 AM
I have seen nearly thrice. But what made me switch was the last time it crashed, it took all of my business data with it. I had done all the regular stuff like disk scan, antivirus, antispyware and all that stuff, but crash it did. However, the data part is my mistake, should have known better. But I was just thinking does Ubuntu crash so bad? And should we backup data on ubuntu too, not that I will not, but just curious though...

beercz
April 26th, 2007, 10:42 AM
I have seen nearly thrice.
How can it be "nearly thrice"? It either is thrice or is not. Is that two times? Or, three? :confused:

bootslap
April 26th, 2007, 10:48 AM
That's so funny.... anyways, for the sake of clarity if not anything else ... it was three (3)...

Happy dude!!

beercz
April 26th, 2007, 10:58 AM
That's so funny.... anyways, for the sake of clarity if not anything else ... it was three (3)...

Happy dude!!

Hi bootslap

Thanks for clearing that up!

Yeah - I'm happy now :-)

btw for the record, I have experienced the BSOD somewhat more than thrice!

deadguy87
April 27th, 2007, 09:30 AM
I used to see the BSOD on a daily basis untill I Upgraded from Win 98 to Win XP SP 2 I guess since then I've seen it twice

r.k.maroon
April 27th, 2007, 10:05 AM
BSoD FTW!

Or wait .... ehm ....

To be honest, I've seen more oops'es on 2.4 kernels than BSoDs in XP, but before XP ... I really don't want to remember those parts of my ******* experiences. Win95 pre-OSR2 ... that's when I switched to *BSD, but not directly because of the BSoDs, just the OS in general!

Bavo
April 27th, 2007, 10:11 AM
I've seen at least one in every windows version I have ever used.

That would be: 95,98,ME,NT,2000,XP

Well, not every windows version, i've never seen them in 3.1 :)

steven8
April 27th, 2007, 10:21 AM
I had an Acer Aspire running win95, and didn't have any bsods. I got a couple after moving to 98, and NT 4 at work was the worst.

cunawarit
April 27th, 2007, 11:06 AM
If so, how many?

Countless!!!! I was a Windows 95 user.


Were they one of the reasons you switched to linux?

I haven't switched to Linux, I use both Linux, and Windows. I like them both for different reasons.


Was there ever one that rendered your PC useless? (I have had one that bad)

No, never.


As for my record, I have seen a total of 3 on my computer, and 2 on my dad's computer (both PCs are Windows XP)

I haven't seen many on XP, certainly never one on my current one and a half year old home XP machine.

Never ever seen one on Windows 2003 Server, which I rate very highly.

Seen a fair few on 2000 and NT4.

And seen a whole lot on Windows 9x.

Overall, I find Windows XP on par with Ubuntu in terms of stability and annoying little bugs. Neither is seriously flawed, but neither is as rock solid as Debian, or 2003 for that matter.

drakos
April 27th, 2007, 12:30 PM
I haven't seen one since I used ME. Then again, I did very little with XP.

sebbouckaert
April 27th, 2007, 12:51 PM
Like so many folks say here:

seen lots of 'em in my Windows 95/98 days...

But I must add that when I started to use XP the amount of BSD's drastically reduced. However, when they appeared they seemed somehow to point at a more serious issue (I have fond memories of one that stated IRQ_IS_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, those were the days)

xpod
April 27th, 2007, 02:32 PM
The first pc`s we had last year were the old m.e & xp machines of family/friends and bsod`s were just one of the many many problems i had to contend with at the time.

That m.e died about 2 weeks after i got the thing....everytime i started it up it would start to boot up then there would be a flashed bsod and the thing would just restart.Even booting into safemode did the same thing so things were pretty bleak.I still did`nt know a thing about Ubuntu & Co at this stage:(
Thankfully someone on another forum told me how to access the cab files with a bootdisk and re-install the thing so i did recover it even though i never figured out what the actual error was.

The XP had a couple too but those were due to dodgy drivers and corrupt dll`s and after a bit of shoving in the right direction i was able to fix those ones without re-installing......that came later.

I even seen one on Vista during the couple of months i had it on my other drive. I once carved a little bit of my Edgy drive up to try out feisty beta and one day when i was messing about with beryl the whole thing just crashed on me.Even after resolving that the system just wasn`t the same it seemed and when i checked Edgy & Vista out Vista was doing that "flash bsod-reboot" routine.

I didn`t even bother trying to figure it out as i`d already decided that Vista was coming off some days earlier so this was just a good excuse to clean out the dust bunnies and redo the whole lot.....and wait for feisty this time