Fatal system error

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A fatal system error (also known as a system crash, stop error, kernel error, or bug check) occurs when an operating system halts because it has reached a condition where it can no longer operate safely (i.e. where critical data could be lost or the system damaged in other ways).

In Microsoft Windows, a fatal system error can be deliberately caused from a kernel-mode driver with either the KeBugCheck or KeBugCheckEx function.^[1] However, this should only be done as a last option when a critical driver is corrupted and is impossible to recover. This design parallels that in OpenVMS. The Unix kernel panic concept is very similar.