How-To Geek
Here’s How to Create a Blue Screen of Death in Any Color You Want
Everybody that’s ever used Windows has at least heard of the Blue Screen of Death, even if they have been lucky enough to never encounter one themselves. Here’s how to make a BSOD in any color you want, using a couple of clicks.
Note: following the technique in this article WILL crash your PC, every single time, without fail… it’s kinda the point, after all. Isn’t the black and green BSOD a lot more geeky? Keep reading at your own risk.
How to Crash Your PC With a Customized “Blue Screen” Color
To accomplish this, we’ll use a little utility created by Windows Expert Mark Russinovich, the same guy that wrote all those SysInternals utilities we love so much. The point of this utility is to illustrate a driver crash, but he’s added a little feature to customize the blue screen color while you’re at it.
Simply download the Not My Fault utility from his blog, head into the exe folder and either pick the Release or x64\Release folder, depending on whether you are using 32-bit or 64-bit Windows. Click the BSOD Colors button to customize the colors, and then click the Do Bug button to crash Windows.
Again, as if the whole article wasn’t obvious enough—when you click the Do Bug button, your system will crash and reboot. You’ll lose anything you haven’t saved. You might have problems starting it back up initially.
Here’s a blue and yellow one…
And here’s a orange and blue one…
If you read this far, I see a red and green xmas-themed screen of death in your future. Maybe a pink one to surprise your wife for Valentine’s day?
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Comments (25)
Programmer by day, geek by night, The Geek, also known as Lowell Heddings, spends all his free time bringing you fresh geekery on a daily basis. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 01/12/11
@The Geek, 2 days before i encountered the blue screen of death the first time but i don’t know wat to do so i reinstalled windows,can you tell me wat to do if blue screen of death comes again?
Does that make the BSoD less scary? Well, maybe :)
@ Ali: Please post your problem in the forums
@geek could u please also tell how to get rid of it …The blue screen of death…i get it to often….@Ali is lucky
ALI – I know you want to know how to make real BSoD go away. We all do. They are aweful. Unfortunately they are both (1) common enough that we have a ‘clever’ name for them and (2) hard enough to solve that Microsoft has yet to figure out a way to keep them from happening since the beginning of time (I.e when WinNT was released).
Common causes:
1. Hardware – Did you install anything new? Pirinter, video card, anything?….uninstall it and try to boot
2 Viruses….
3 New Windows patches (ironic…but possible)
4 Software drivers. Update them per vendor instructions. I once fried an NT server due to incompatibility between WinNT service pack 3 and existing adaptec raid drivers. The BSod was quite unpleasant
Good luck
would you be so kind as telling me how did you PrtSc the BSoD?
@pr0n00b
probably created the crash inside a virtual machine
I second that question !
Thank you for the article, I’m gonna do some good jokes
Oh, thank you so much. I haven’t seen this screen for such a long time since I changed to Linux. I saved it to use as my wallpaper.
When ever I encounter the BSOD i just go to Accessories-System Tools-System Restore and bring my computer back to the day before and let System Restore do its wonderful thing and Bam BSOD is gone and so it the problem that brought it on. Try it, It works great
Bruceski007
Great article !!
can i activate the bug using any shortcut without running the exe. ????
@Ali
Sounds to me like its hardware related. If you put any new parts in it or changed its hardware setup in anyway you need to change it back and if nothing else works all I can say is “new computer time”.
I get a BSOD at least once a month, sometimes just by staring my computer up I get one before the login screen, thank god all I have to do is restart my computer and it is as if nothing ever happened. Btw it has been some time since I got one, so one is due soon, might as well make it look nice.
I’ve never had a BSOD ever since I started using Windows 7. Actually, I don’t remember seeing one in Vista either. It was XP which kept showing constant Blue-Screens.
Blue Screens are usually generated by badly written drivers, generally from 3-party companies.
In Windows Vista, 2008 and 7, there’s a more strict driver model, so it’s far more difficult to write bad code… and run it.
WHen you change the color, is it there until you change it? or is it only effective in the bug test?
How do you take a screenshot of a boot screen (or the BSOD in this case)?
非常感謝啦
你怎樣截圖的開機畫面
Win 7 has plenty of bsod’s. ATI drivers are, imo, great at causing tdr bsod’s, especially when UAC is fully enabled. When uac blanks the screen, a bsod can easily result. Plenty of other, mystery bsod’s as well. But somewhat better then xp.
computer have virus
lms: “(2) hard enough to solve that Microsoft has yet to figure out a way to keep them from happening since the beginning of time”
Microsoft don’t really have to work on ways to get rid of BSOD’s their more of a diagnostic tool indicating a fault on the hardware level or the hardwares inability to interface appropiately with the software (driver incompatibility issues).
The best thing to do when u get a BSOD is always to update (or in certain instances downgrade) all your drivers, otherwise it might suggest and underlying hardware problem (malfunctioning ram modules, damaged video card, etc.)
All things considered, I’d rather just not have a ‘screen of death’ in any color.
@ks02233 @Robert Dunn
Create the same environment in Virtual Machine and take the Print screen. Virtual Machine are good for R&D rather then our original system :)
Best Regards,
I haven’t seen a BSOD since XP
Ha! BSOD…….. Sounds like some thing you’d do in the bathroom. With that said is a virtual machine safer to bsod on and if so what a good vm