Re: Blue Screen of Death
 

If you can boot from removable media, you can easily gain enough access to change that screensaver. On the other hand, maybe that's part of the reason that the computer is restricted in the first place.

Another thing. Why so many BSODs? This isn't Windows 98 RTM or XP RTM, right?

Re: Blue Screen of Death
 

I would suppose that the computers are not restricted enough. Comet cursors are pretty! :-/

Windows XP is pretty darn stable when used responsibly. Random games downloaded from random sites....not so stable.

Wetzel

Re: Blue Screen of Death
 

There was a time when I would get at least one BSoD on my Windows XP desktop every week, all with the exact same error. After several months, I was able to track the problem back to a HP Printer driver, which had automatically installed itself somehow on my computer when I first connected the printer. After uninstalling that bad driver, I've barely had any BSoDs.

The one exception was when Windows bluescreened while installing a Critical Windows update; this then corrupted the svchost process, which rendered my desktop a sitting paperweight until I was able to reinstall Windows XP. To this day, I swear if Windows had a human personality, it would be emo. It's the only operating system I've ever used that wants to inflict pain and self-mutilation tendencies upon itself. :rolleyes:

Re: Blue Screen of Death
 

Back when XP first came out, there were a pile of annoying little things that would summon up the bluescreen. Many were related to driver writers not knowing how to write NT-based drivers, and others were due to bugs in the OS itself. With SP1 and SP2, the BSOD ought to be much less frequent.

Personally, I bring far more bluescreens upon myself than software does on my behalf. (For example, the time when I installed a Windows 98 or NT4—it wasn't too clear which—parallel-port-based ATA bridge driver on my Windows 2000 system. That required some surgery with another copy of Windows to excise the offending file, and restore the installation.)

Also, if you want to be able to cause bluescreens at will (in any NT5 variant), make a REG_DWORD at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\i8042prt\Parameters called CrashOnCtrlScroll with the value 1. When you reboot, RCtrl + 2 × ScrLk will cause an immediate BSOD. (Documentation is here.) See what I mean about causing them myself?

Re: Blue Screen of Death
 

At my school, I was able to pass the restriction without a hack. All I did was unzip the file and then you right click on the icon and click on install. It then replaces the set screen saver with the BSOD screen saver as if you were to tell it to use it.

Re: Blue Screen of Death
 

For some odd reason it my computer sees the SysInternals Bluescreen file as AutoCAD script. It didn't do this before I installed AutoCAD last week. Any ideas what this means? :confused: :confused: :confused:

Re: Blue Screen of Death
 

AutoCAD stupidly takes over the .scr extension, believing it to be a AutoLISP script or something similar. You just need to put the screen saver in your %SYSTEMROOT%\system32 directory, then you can select it from the Display Properties control panel.

You can also go into the registry and change the (Default) value of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.scr from AutoCADScriptFile to scrfile. That will restore the ability of a screensaver to be executed directly. It shouldn't hurt AutoCAD, either—you'll just have to open scripts through AutoCAD or something else, instead of double-clicking them.

Remember, a screensaver is an executable file, and therefore it can be used to deliver a malware payload. The Sysinternals screensaver is safe, but you shouldn't trust a screensaver from just anyone. In fact, this is the way that another famous exploit was performed on older versions of Windows. Recall that when you're at the logon screen, a screen saver appears by default....

Re: Blue Screen of Death
 

Just thought I would let everyone know that I got a BSOD today, and yes I thought it was the screen saver. I can't believe how much loosing a power point ruins that screen saver. :mad:

Re: Blue Screen of Death
 

I've had this XP computer for five years now, and not one single BSOD, but I'm certainly using the screensaver now.

Re: Blue Screen of Death
 

I love this screen saver! I put it on my computer the other day and when I got back from class my computer was off and my roommate was like "your computer is so screwed up, it just keeps blue-screening!" It took me a while to stop laughing while I showed him it was just a screen saver. And this is a kid who is no stranger to computers either.