White screen of death

n Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, and (possibly) also Windows NT, a White Box of Doom or White screen of death will appear if an error occurs while loading a system-critical application or process, such as the system shell (e.g. Explorer.exe). It has a similar appearance to a General Protection Fault, or GPF.

Clicking "OK" will normally cause the computer to shut down, or it may result in another similar error. This error may also appear if, at startup, an illegal operation occurs during the startup process. Also it will make your computer freeze and you have to shut the computer down.

Some computers, such as Dell computers, have boot errors that result in a WSOD

This error may occasionally be ignored, as it may just have been a single occurrence of a failed startup sequence; however, if it should occur repeatedly, the user may then be required to reinstall Windows.

A way to work around this if you don't want to install Windows is to set the shell to Winfile.exe.