Synthetic Monitoring

Simulate visitor interaction with your site to monitor the end user experience.

View Product Info

FEATURES

Simulate visitor interaction

Identify bottlenecks and speed up your website.

Learn More

Real User Monitoring

Enhance your site performance with data from actual site visitors

View Product Info

FEATURES

Real user insights in real time

Know how your site or web app is performing with real user insights

Learn More

Infrastructure Monitoring Powered by SolarWinds AppOptics

Instant visibility into servers, virtual hosts, and containerized environments

View Infrastructure Monitoring Info
Comprehensive set of turnkey infrastructure integrations

Including dozens of AWS and Azure services, container orchestrations like Docker and Kubernetes, and more 

Learn More

Application Performance Monitoring Powered by SolarWinds AppOptics

Comprehensive, full-stack visibility, and troubleshooting

View Application Performance Monitoring Info
Complete visibility into application issues

Pinpoint the root cause down to a poor-performing line of code

Learn More

Log Management and Analytics Powered by SolarWinds Loggly

Integrated, cost-effective, hosted, and scalable full-stack, multi-source log management

 View Log Management and Analytics Info
Collect, search, and analyze log data

Quickly jump into the relevant logs to accelerate troubleshooting

Learn More

Blue Screen of Death in unexpected locations

The infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) probably hasn’t escaped the notice of anyone who has used a computer in the last decade or so. If you haven’t seen it on your own PC, you probably know someone it has happened to.

There is actually a ridiculous amount of BSOD photos to be found around the Web. And not just of PCs. As this post will show you, the blue error screen seems to show up everywhere, and often in highly unexpected locations.

This is a collection of some of the very best ones we could find. Enjoy! 🙂

At a Nine Inch Nails concert

Ok, Trent Reznor, the front man of NiN, has stated that they did this intentionally, but we still had to include it because it’s just plain cool.


Photo by LtRandazzo.

At the Olympic Games

This happened during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. It was only visible for about a second before a backup was switched in.


Found at Mac Amour.

In traffic

We’re not sure, but we think this is taken in France somewhere.


Photo by Jakob Fix.

In Las Vegas

Another billboard malfunctioning. Ouch. This one belongs to the Paris Hotel and Casino.


Photo by Raquel Lonas.

On the Strip in Vegas

Las Vegas seems prone to the BSOD. 🙂


Photo by Woof.

At a NYC subway entrance

According to the photographer, this problem remained for days before it was finally fixed.


Photo by Mike Goren.

On the bus

Picture taken on a London bus.


Photo by Massimo Banzi.

At the ATM

We included this one just because we all know it happens from time to time. We’ve seen this here in Sweden as well.


Found at Shijaz.com.

At the Heathrow airport

Now, that’s not a very informative flight billboard, is it?


Photo by Graham Anderson.

On a vending machine

Well, we think this is a vending machine. Whatever it is, something is broken…


Photo by Limesik.

At the grocery store

We’re not sure what is supposed to be on this screen, but we’re absolutely sure this isn’t it. 🙂


Photo by Hayley.

At a car expo

A not-very-helpful information screen at Nissan’s booth. It remained like that the whole day.


Photo by Francis Roque.

On a Toronto department store

The Bay department store in Toronto has four giant screens. According to the photographer, this was going on for days.


Photo by Sean Galbraith.

And finally, a BSOD cocktail?

We hope you liked this collection of blue screens showing up in unexpected locations. A big thumbs up to all the attentive photographers out there who were able to catch these moments.

Even Microsoft, whose Windows 9x and NT operating systems are among the most famous originators of BSODs, seems to regard the BSOD with some measure of affection. They were even serving a blue cocktail named BSOD at a MSN party somewhere. 🙂 It has become cult.

We haven’t seen the blue screen in years, though. It’s not a problem in Vista, which we all run here at the Pingdom office.

Did we miss your favorite BSOD picture? Add a link to it in the comments!

SolarWinds Observability SaaS now offers synthetic transaction monitoring

Powerful transaction monitoring now complements the availability and real user [...]

Exit Rate vs Bounce Rate – Which One You Should Improve and Why

Tracking your website’s exit and bounce rates will give you insight into how [...]

Introduction to Observability

These days, systems and applications evolve at a rapid pace. This makes analyzi [...]

Webpages Are Getting Larger Every Year, and Here’s Why it Matters

Last updated: February 29, 2024 Average size of a webpage matters because it [...]

A Beginner’s Guide to Using CDNs

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Websites have become larger and more complex [...]

Monitor your website’s uptime and performance

With Pingdom's website monitoring you are always the first to know when your site is in trouble, and as a result you are making the Internet faster and more reliable. Nice, huh?

START YOUR FREE 30-DAY TRIAL

MONITOR YOUR WEB APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

Gain availability and performance insights with Pingdom – a comprehensive web application performance and digital experience monitoring tool.

START YOUR FREE 30-DAY TRIAL
Start monitoring for free