Feb 14, 2008

Manual BSOD

Do you know you can "cause" BSOD manually? This isn't a bug, it's a "feature" in Windows that is designed to let users trigger a crash dump for testing purposes. There's even a whole Microsoft KB article on the subject.

To enable this feature, open up regedit and then browse down to one of these keys, depending on your keyboard type:
USB Keyboard
 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\kbdhid\Parameters
PS/2 Keyboard
 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
Now right-click on the right-hand pane and add a new DWORD key named CrashOnCtrlScroll, giving it a value of 1.

Reboot your computer, and when it starts back up you can trigger the Blue Screen of Death by using the following keyboard shortcut:
 Hold down Right Ctrl and hit Scroll Lock twice
To remove this "feature" you can just delete the registry key and then restart your computer again.