It's definitely called The Blue Screen of Death.
It terrifies me whenever it happens. Knock on wood, it hasn't happened with this laptop. My previous one kept getting the BSOD, and my motherboard was gone. So that computer is kaput.

I thought I had my computer to automatically empty the temp files, but apparently not.

Jasdip, you better get in there and empty all that temporary stuff, before the BBSOD gets you!!!
I especially hate those imaginary visions of viruses that scare me to death.

ahhh yes the blue screen of death, have seen it myself LOL luckily my dh is a techie and fixed my laptop. we had it years ago on our desktop/server too.

cell phones have the white screen of death lol, have had 2 work ones get it along w/ several co-workers :-) ~ liz

Is it always an indication of having an overload of temporary stuff?

Hayjud,
The blue screen of death ( or BSoD as it is commonly referred to) is a Windows function and can be caused by many things - registry errors, operating system problems, RAM issues, even software conflicts.
If you recently installed something new, try uninstalling and re-installing.

It is working great now!

Gardenspice, Can you tell me about this:
When I close down my email program, this always pops up on the screen (for a couple years now)

A small screen that says this:
To free up disk space, O E can compact messages. This may take up to a few min.
The choices are OK or Cancel

I always X it out.
If I chose OK what difference will it make? Will I need to do anything different to open email or anything else on the Email site?

I have a really old computer and a couple of years ago I had a dream about the BBSOD......in vivid color.
Next morning I got up, did my morning chores and came to the computer.....turned it on and there I see in more vivid color, the BBSOD. And I was hearing a terrible noise.
I turned the computer off and called a repair person who lives in my neighborhood.
Seems like I had gotten a virus and it was destroying my hard drive.
He was able to save my pictures and a few other things and then replaced the hard drive.
Weird experience to have that vivid dream and then have it come true.
I recently ordered a new computer and it will be delivered next week. But I have gotten two more years out of this one and will give it to DH to practice on.

Carol,
The reason I wondered about a virus, is because I have started getting some wierd email. These have a whole list of others in the to: line. Some of the names or addys I recognize, but the email addys are very old and most are no longer used. My brother's name was in the from space, but I had to block it. He doesn't use that one anymore.

The next time you have that kind of dream/nightmare you better take care of it immeadiately. lol

I haven't seen that screen since I used Windows 98. This laptop uses Vista and my new laptop runs Windows 7. I haven't blue screened with either of them.

How about this?

Sometimes If I'm scrolling and let the cursor go too far over to the right side of the page. The screen turns BLACK for a second and comes right back on.

What's that about?

Sue

Judy, I truly listen to my dreams. I could write a book.
One dream probably save a little kid's life when I was working as a nurse.

when you get that message
"A small screen that says this:
To free up disk space, O E can compact messages. This may take up to a few min.
The choices are OK or Cancel "

you need to let it do the compacting it is essential for continued proper functioning of OE

Blue screen of death is a term long used for the blue warning screens which pop up when there is some type of problem with the operating system. The message on the blue screen is very important it will tell you what is happening to your system that is causing the shutdown. Those codes can be looked up on google to find more info on the cause.
You can usually find out what was happening by looking at your event viewer, Start> control panel> administrative tools> event viewer, there you can click on the options, system is one of them when you double click that you will see all the system events if there are red or yellow flags those would be the ones to look at, just hilight that entry and double click on it to be able to read what it says about that particular entry. From that info you can possibly find out what is happening to your system and know what to do to stop it from happening again.

I highly recommend all computers have malwarebytes free on them, update the program then run the full scan it will find infections that regular antivirus programs can not take care of and clean them. This program is safe to have on the pc along with your antivirus program, you update it and run the full scan every week or so.
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (Win) - Detecting and Removing Malware

Malware infections can definitely cause problems that can bring on a blue screen.

here is some info on what a BSOD is, actually it is called a stop error screen
Stop error screen

Sue_va, that sounds like a mouse setting that is setting your screen to go blank, a sort of forced screensaver. You can probably turn it off in the settings somewhere.

As for the "BSOD" as it's "lovingly" called, it's a little different than the true 9x BSOD but can still throw a person into a panic, especially if you're in the middle of a big project and didn't backup. There can be a lot of causes, some of which are corrupted files (very common), overheating (rare), memory parity errors (common), JOOTTs (it *is* Windows, so it definitely happens), failing hardware (rare), to name a few.

Just having a lot of files, temp or otherwise is not really a cause, at least not often. It really doesn't make a difference if a file is temporary or not as far as the system is concerned in that way - a file is a file. Excess files and temp files can slow the system down a bit and increase boot time though.

Heyjud, I'd highly recommend you do a thorough diskcheck on it to see if there's corrupted files. The Windows stop could cause some corrupted files and corrupt files can have a domino effect. I'd also run the antivirus *and* at least one or two good anti-malware programs. Check that your computer has adequate ventilation. If it's been a while it might need to be opened and have it's diodes dusted... literally. A little compressed air to blow out the dust. They're good air cleaners!

The "compacting" thing on OE is not so scary as it seems. It's basically housekeeping and maintenance. OE, in Microsoft's almighty "wisdom" does not delete deleted emails. That's right, when you delete an email it goes to the trash, and you empty the trash, it's gone, right? Wrong. Mama Microsoft knows better, and it is good for tracing tracks. :) The deleted emails, though not visible are still on your computer tying up space. "Compacting" basically means deleting the mail you thought was deleted. By default it asks you about this every 100 shutdown attempts as I recall. Something like that. One or two cautions, though: Be sure to BACKUP your email first. Things can go wrong. And they often choose the worst time and problems develop all too often on the most valuable stuff! Next, when you let it compact, it will likely take a while. Do *not* interrupt it while it's doing its thing. You don't want email coming in so go "offline" so it doesn't check for mail. Once finished you may likely see an improvement in the performance of OE. After you do this, it's also a good time to defrag your system if it freed up a lot of space your hard drive could become fragmented.

Speaking of not backing up... how about the time one of my customers had one of our new systems. They asked for a rush and to not bother with burn-in, that they'd do it. They're a large machine shop and do a lot of custom work. They were in the middle of a big project, didn't back up for over a month, estimated the value of the work at over $10k and the hard drive died. Nope, no backup. I wasn't even going to attempt a data recovery on that one, sent it to a big outfit. Nothing recoverable. Did they learn a lesson? I doubt it!

Knock on wood! I have not had a blue screen of death since instaling Win XP service pack 3.

I was almost scared to open this thread, ha ha. I thought you were talking "real" death.

I am so hopeless on maintenance & back up. What I am doing is putting my backup stuff at another email address in folders for storage. No, its not ideal but at least its safe. I also have some hidden pages on our website, that holds information I can get to.

Most times I've seen it, it's because of a device that's plugged into your machine. I usually disconnect everything and bring them back one by one so if there's a conflict, it'll resolve itself.

Plus the other causes mentioned above, but I usually start with the devices.

I (fortunately) haven't seen TBBSOD, but when I had my old pc, I didn't realize the power source had come unplugged, so it had been running on the battery. The battery must have gotten pretty used up because all of a sudden an announcement came on the screen......I am going into hibernation now. It took a while for me to realize I had to find the power cord and plug it back in.

Thank you for all the HELP! I see I have an interesting day ahead of me.

I will start by backing up everything -- I have directions in this big pile somewhere!

Dottie, That was almost funny!
Joann, Sometimes I wonder which is worse! lol

It's a great idea to buy an external hard drive. They're coming down in price. My husband bought me a 2T (2000 gigs) hard drive for Christmas 2 years ago. I don't know that I'll ever fill it up. I'm backing up my laptop as I type this. I try to do it at least once a month.

Also, if you have an iPhone, back that up to iTunes reguarly too.

Looks like you got your answer on compacting in OE.
Glad to hear that everything is operating well now!

Well, I didn't backup, because If couldn't figure out how.

When I renewed my Norton Anti Virus etc. I upgraded (like about $10 more) and it includes a backup off site. When I clicked on it, it says that my system is backed up. I have NO idea how to use a backup, if I should ever need it, but it is there.

I OKed the campacting, and it only took a few seconds. Before I started, my desk top trash can was empty - after there were things in there and theey had names on them that matched the names of folders in my Outlook Express.
PANIC (I seem to do that quite easily) I opened the email program and everything there seems to be ther and OK.

Does this mean that only the things that have been Deleted were compacted?

Now I need to put a bunch of pictures on disks. I should do this kind of thing more often, so I can remember how to do it.

Heyjud, "compacting" is a misnomer since technically your OE folder was "compacted" since it cleaned out the junk. It's a bad term and cleanup would be more appropriate. What's happening is similar to not taking your trash out to the garbage, rather, emptying your waste baskets in a closet in your house, or a spare bedroom or the corner of the living room... Eventually it'll affect efficiency in your house. Occasionally cleaning out that trash would be called compacting your house in Microsoft slang.

I understand the panic. LOL I probably should have warned you that the old .dbx files would be deleted and have the names you would recognize but never gave it a thought.

You learned something new. Now on to backup and hopefully never have to restore!

But I do encourage you to do a disk check. That should be done regularly along with defrag and of course virus/malware checks. I prefer Spybot S&D to Malwarebytes, some prefer SuperAntiSpyware but they're all pretty good. I have all three. I also encourage using more than one. I generally alternate between types if I don't run two in a row. Spywareblaster should be updated regularly too as of course should your virus and malware program definitions.