Technical Causes For Faults
General protection faults are raised by the processor when a protected instruction is encountered which exceeds the permission level of the currently executing task - either because a user-mode program is attempting a protected instruction, or because the operating system has issued a request which would put the processor into an undefined state.
General protection faults are caught and handled by modern operating systems. Generally, if the fault originated in a user-mode program, the user-mode program is terminated. If, however, the fault originated in a core system driver or the operating system itself, the operating system usually saves diagnostic information either to a file or to the screen, and then either causes a blue screen of death or restarts the computer.
Read more about this topic: General Protection Fault
Famous quotes containing the words technical and/or faults:
“In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)