Gray Screen of Death

A **Gray Screen of Death** (also known as a **gray screen** or **GSoD**) is an error screen displayed on a BBC Electronics and Software computer system after a fatal system error, also known as a system crash: when the operating system reaches a condition where it can no longer operate safely.

Whenever a BBC electronic device crashes, the OS typically locks up and then displays an gray screen containing the crash report. These are generally caused by bugs within programs. An GSoD can also be caused if the user deletes the system files of a BBC operating system, such as entering "godmode del C/OSFiles/BEEBSYS/\* -y" into the command prompt. Less commonly, crashes can also corrupt your files, forcing users to restart from scratch. However, the users can restore their data if they have a backup of it. Having an excessive amount of windows on screen can also cause the OS to crash.

## History

GSoDs have been present in BBC RISC 3.0 and all BBC operating systems released afterwards. GSoDs can be caused by poorly written device drivers or malfunctioning hardware, such as faulty memory, power supply issues, overheating of components, or hardware running beyond its specification limits. In BBC RISC 3.0 to BBC OS 2000, incompatible DLLs or bugs in the operating system kernel could also cause GSoDs. Because of the instability and lack of memory protection in BBC RISC 3.0 to BBC OS 2000, GSoDs were much more common.

## Causes

### Programs

The most common causes of the OS crashing are mainly bugs within installed programs. To resolve this, the user must remove the progran causing the crashes, or reinstall the OS.

### Corruption

Corruption of the system files during setup can cause crashes. The easiest way to fix it is to get a new installation CD and use it to reinstall the OS.

### Hardware issues

Outdated drivers or issues with existing hardware can cause slow and/or buggy behavior in BBC OS. Fixing this is generally easy, usually by updating the driver software or obtaining an updated version of that driver. More commonly or not, the user may have to remove any faulty hardware causing the crash.

To prevent these, the user must not have any of their device's vents blocked or be very dusty, which can occur over time. Vent blockages can cause overheating, even if hardware acceleration is enabled. If dust is not the cause, defects within the hardware can also cause crashes. RAM or video card issues are the most common causes of this, and there are tools within programs that can diagnose problems in this. According to most BBC operating systems' system requirements, an adequate amount of RAM is required to run the OS. Users can minimize slowness or crashes by closing programs that are not currently in use.

## Error codes

When the OS crashes, it will generate a log file on the user's desktop. Depending on the severity of the crash, the user may need to run some diagnostic tools on their computer or device. If that doesn't work, they may have to reinstall the OS and all data might be lost.

### 0x000006B

This error, often called the Process Initialization Failed error, occurs if the file bootcache.bbc was manipulated or if the file is corrupt. This error usually occurs during startup. To fix the error, the bootcache.bbc will need to be replaced. If that doesn't work, the OS may need to be reinstalled.

### 0xc000006

This error occurs very rarely. This error is most commonly caused by corrupted files within the BEEBSYS folder and is also caused if the user has a virus or malware infection on their PC. This can also be caused by outdated drivers and/or missing .bbc files. The most common symptoms of this can result in startup problems or frequent crashing. The OS may run slower or may have frequent frame rate drops, or the OS might freeze and become unresponsive from time to time. Most of the time, the OS will generally fail to start due to this error. To fix the error, the user will need to run the BBC Repair Tool to check for problems. If the repair tool does detect a problem, it will automatically fix the error(s) contained within the OS. If that doesn't work, then the user may need to reinstall the OS.