In
computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...
, a fatal exception error or fatal error is an
error
An error (from the Latin , meaning 'to wander'Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “error (n.), Etymology,” September 2023, .) is an inaccurate or incorrect action, thought, or judgement.
In statistics, "error" refers to the difference between t ...
that causes a program to abort and may therefore return the user to the
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
. When this happens, data that the program was processing may be lost. A fatal error is usually distinguished from a
fatal system error (colloquially referred to in the
MS Windows operating systems by the error message it produces as a "
blue screen of death
The blue screen of death (BSoD) or blue screen error, blue screen, fatal error, bugcheck, and officially known as a stop erroris a fatal system error, critical error screen displayed by the Microsoft Windows operating systems to indicate a cr ...
"). A fatal error occurs typically in any of the following cases:
* An
illegal instruction has been attempted
* Invalid
data
Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...
or
code
In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communicati ...
has been accessed
* An operation is not allowed in the current
ring or
CPU mode
* A program attempts to
divide by zero (only for integers; with the IEEE
floating point
In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some base) multiplied by an integer power of that base.
Numbers of this form ...
standard, this creates an
infinity
Infinity is something which is boundless, endless, or larger than any natural number. It is denoted by \infty, called the infinity symbol.
From the time of the Ancient Greek mathematics, ancient Greeks, the Infinity (philosophy), philosophic ...
instead).
In some systems, such as
macOS
macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
and
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
, a fatal error causes the operating system to create a
log entry or to save an image (
core dump
In computing, a core dump, memory dump, crash dump, storage dump, system dump, or ABEND dump consists of the recorded state of the working Computer storage, memory of a computer program at a specific time, generally when the program has crash (com ...
) of the process.
References
External links
What Are Fatal Exception Errors– Microsoft Knowledge Base
Computer errors
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