What does a blue screen of death (BSOD) typically indicate?

A blue screen of death (BSOD) is a stop error screen that is displayed on Windows operating systems when the system encounters a critical error from which it cannot recover without a restart. This situation typically occurs due to severe issues in the operating system, such as incompatible drivers, corrupt system files, or hardware conflicts. The BSOD serves as a warning to users that a serious problem has occurred, which prevents the operating system from continuing to run safely.

While temporary software glitches can lead to issues in the system, they usually do not result in a BSOD. Likewise, a hardware component failure can cause a BSOD, but the blue screen itself specifically indicates a critical system error rather than a general hardware failure message. An application crash might affect only a particular program and not necessarily the entire operating system, thus it would not trigger a BSOD. Therefore, the blue screen of death is primarily an indication of a critical system error in Windows that requires attention to avoid data loss or further system instability.