The Windows blue screen of death is an enigmatic thing; unavoidable and menacing, it knows no master, rising unbidden to threaten young and old alike. The blue screen is one of those universal frustrations; like traffic, or multiple waiting rooms at the doctor's office, or finding food between your teeth minutes after an important meeting or rendezvous.

It would be something approximating madness to suggest a way to voluntarily kill your Windows machine with the fabled blue screen of death. It would be sheer madness to suggest why you might want to do so.

Well, we're here to do both.

Thanks to a bit of keyboard foolery, you can create your own Windows BSOD in 3 simple keystrokes. It turns out this function was built into Windows for testing purposes, so it's not a bug, and it won't have any side effects (beside that Pavlovian grimace on your face as the blue screen appears). If there's any doubt about that, check out the Microsoft KB article on the subject (because we all know the MS KB articles are the end of the debate).

To enable this "feature," open up regedit (if you don't know what that is, read no further!) and browse down to one of the below keys, which will differ according to keyboard type:

USB:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\kbdhid\Parameters

PS/2 Keyboard:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters

Right-click on the right-hand pane of the Registry Editor and add a new DWORD key named CrashOnCtrlScroll, giving it a value of 1.

Reboot your computer; now you are ready to bring forth the blue screen of death by using the following keyboard shortcut:

Hold down Right Ctrl and hit Scroll Lock twice

And the beast will rise. If you wish to remove this behavior, simply delete the registry key and restart your computer.

As to why you would want the ability to trigger said blue screen? I'll let you be creative in the comments, but I can think of a few: it can get you out of work (how can you expect to get anything done with a freak recurring blue screen of death?), scare a friend by triggering it on their own computer...the possibilities are well nigh endless.

Ah, productivity...

[Via the How-To Geek]

There's a lot to love about Wikipedia, and for geeks this page describing the various types of "screens of death" might just push that love into overdrive.

While most people are familiar with the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) in Windows, there are a number of other colors that are also associated with severe unrecoverable errors in various operating systems. The colors run the gamut, and include blue, black, green, yellow and white, plus various other screens of death that are not color themed.

In a strange way browsing through these unfortunate screenshots is like a walk down memory lane, albeit one that brings back somewhat unpleasant memories.

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.

I don't know why you'd want to do this, but... Amit Singh explains how to bring the infamous Blue Screen of Death to Mac OS X. The default Mac OS X kernel panic screen isn't nearly as jarring as the Blue Screen of Death; by comparison, it's downright soothing. My iBook and I have survived three kernel panics together over the past two and a half years, none of which raised my blood pressure too terribly.

But, if you really want to go tinkering in your Mac's source tree, have at it. Perhaps this is suitable as an April Fool's Day experiment, or a one-time office prank. Amit explains how to simulate a kernel panic and bring up the dread blue screen. Hopefully you're not experiencing kernel panics all the time, anyway.
If reason prevails and you actually don't want to bring the Blue Screen of Death to your Mac, the article is also just an interesting read about the history of kernel panics. (I think I just upped my nerd quotient by using the word "interesting" in the same sentence as "kernel panic.")