This, to me, is a breath of fresh air. Microsoft has a freely available screensaver that mimics the much maligned Blue Screen of Death error screen that Windows gives when it crashes in a big bad way. While other prank screensavers have been made that are similar, this one is unique in that all of the identifiable text on the screen is pulled from the system's actual values - so the BSOD looks as legitimate as it possibly can. It even gives the option in the screensaver's configuration to fake disk activity, so that it appears as if a real dump is happening.It's no surprise to learn that this download originated with SysInternals, a company that made quite the name for itself developing tools to get to the bottom of what is actually going on inside Windows. Microsoft recognized their value, and snatched them up - so the brand is now known as Windows SysInternals.
Obviously, we can't condone this, but for all sorts of fun you could install this screensaver on a friend's machine, then watch when they become ever more frustrated that their machine keeps "crashing". Am I mean for thinking that's funny? I guess I am.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-11-2006 @ 2:58PM
Buggy said...
The screensaver was cute, but it left my system set to 640x480 resolution. What a pain -- having to reset the video resolution each time the screen saver quits.
Come on guys... did you test this?
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11-11-2006 @ 2:59PM
Jason Clarke said...
I sure did - and it worked fine on my machine, even with two monitors. It simply blanked my second monitor, and set my first one to 640x480 while the screensaver was running, then everything went back to normal when I exited it.
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11-12-2006 @ 11:01AM
Jim said...
Wow! It's 1997 all over again!
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11-12-2006 @ 11:03AM
cryton said...
This is actually an old one. We used to use this at offices all over the place during the contractor boom in the late 90's.
The cool thing that made this seem legit was the ability to list the drivers of the system it was used on. It really came in handy for the guys you just couldn't stand!! :)
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11-12-2006 @ 11:03AM
Kat said...
What's up with the multi-colored links? And the first 2 don't work.
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11-12-2006 @ 11:03AM
André Brock said...
just out of curiousity - is there a kernel panic screensaver for Mac OS X? i'd LOVE to have one of those with password protection...
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11-12-2006 @ 11:03AM
Buggy said...
Hmmm, it's working fine now, but previously (when launching the .scr directly) it changed my resolution. Maybe my NVIDIA drivers just freaked out? OK, I'll give it another chance. :-)
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11-12-2006 @ 11:03AM
Buggy (not) said...
This is actually an extremely realistic screen saver -- I love the way they threw in the XP boot-up screen. It almost fooled me! Nicely done! (And no more resolution problems since.) Cool!
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11-12-2006 @ 11:09AM
Jason Clarke said...
Kat - thanks for pointing out those weird non-links. It appears that was some kind of funky result of Firefox's spell-check formatting (red underlines), if you can believe it. All I did to fix it was go in and re-type the linked words. Weird.
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11-12-2006 @ 3:45PM
Noam said...
Too bad they don't have ones for higher resolutions.
Nice anyways.
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11-12-2006 @ 3:51PM
Johnnyg0 said...
Buggy: even better, if you run if off Windows 2000 it shows you the Windows 2000 startup screen. It seems to know pretty much on the system for a screensaver :)
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11-13-2006 @ 11:19AM
Glenn said...
The goofiest part about this? McAfee thinks this is a virus. Lovely.
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