BSOD explained: What's the Windows blue screen of death and what do I do?

Bring out your Blue Screens of Death — you're in good (and cursed) company.

If you're a Windows user, you may have come face to face with Microsoft's dreaded blue error message, often referred to as the acronym BSOD. Microsoft introduced it in Windows 3.0 in 1990, and it's been a dastardly rampallion ever since — most recently rearing its cerulean maw in a global Windows outage.

SEE ALSO: CrowdStrike announces Microsoft outage workaround. How to deal with the Blue Screen of Death.