Character-Mode Messages

Two types of character-mode messages occur when the Windows NT Kernel detects an inconsistent condition from which it cannot recover: STOP messages and hardware-malfunction messages. You can organize these messages into the following groups:

• STOP messages that can appear only during the relatively short Windows NT startup period, which is Phase 4 of the Windows NT boot sequence.

• STOP messages that can be traced to a software condition detected by the processor.

• Hardware-malfunction messages that can be traced to a hardware condition detected by the processor.

• All the rest of the STOP messages.