A fatal system error, also known as a system crash, stop error, kernel error, or bug check, is when an operating system halts the moment it reaches a condition where it cannot operate safely.
In Microsoft Windows, a fatal system error can be deliberately caused from a kernel-mode driver with either the KeBugCheck or KeBugCheckEx function. However, this should only be done as a last option when a critical driver has corrupted data and it is impossible to recover from the problem. This is a design based on the Unix-like way of kernel panicking and logging. Windows is not the first operating system to use the term Bugcheck for this function. For example, VMS used this terminology several years before Windows was developed. Facilities such as these help in debugging error conditions from which the operating system cannot, or decides that it should not attempt to, recover.
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—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)