Manually Crash Windows - Blue Screen on Demand

Windows includes a feature that can be enabled to manually crashing the system by holding the right CTRL key and pressing the "Scroll Lock" key twice. This can be useful for generating a crash dump to debug applications or it can be a fun prank. Follow these steps to enable this feature:

1. Open Registry Editor by clicking on the Start Button and typing in regedit and hitting Enter.  If you are on XP first select Run and then type in regedit and hit Enter.
2. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters.
3. Create a new DWORD value and name it CrashOnCtrlScroll
4. Right-click on the new DWORD value and select Modify.
5. Type 1 in the Value data field and click OK.
6. Close regedit and reboot your system.

Now you can blue screen (crash) your system by holding the right CTRL key and pressing "Scroll Lock" twice.

Tip:

Your system may reboot automatically when this crash is initiated. If your system reboots immediately initiating the crash, and you want to see the blue screen, follow these steps:

1. Go to Control Panel > System
2. Click on the Advanced tab
3. Under Startup and Recovery, click the Settings button.
4. Under System failure, uncheck the option Automatically restart.

Happy crashing...