Invoke Blue Screen of Death using Managed Code

Question

Just curious here: is it possible to invoke a Windows Blue Screen of Death using .net managed code under Windows XP/Vista? And if it is possible, what could the example code

Answer 1

This one doesn't need any kernel-mode drivers, just a SeDebugPrivilege. You can set your process critical by NtSetInformationProcess, or RtlSetProcessIsCritical and just kill your process. You will see same bugcheck code as you kill csrss.exe, because you set same "critical" flag on your process.

Answer 2

I once managed to generate a BSOD on Windows XP using System.Net.Sockets in .NET 1.1 irresponsibly. I could repeat it fairly regularly, but unfortunately that was a couple of years ago and I don't remember exactly how I triggered it, or have the source code around anymore.

Answer 3

You could use OSR Online's tool that triggers a kernel crash. I've never tried it myself but I imagine you could just run it via the standard .net Process class:

http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?article=153

Answer 4

Try live videoinput using directshow in directx8 or directx9, most of the calls go to kernel mode video drivers. I succeded in lots of blue screens when running a callback procedure from live videocaptureing source, particulary if your callback takes a long time, can halt the entire Kernel driver.

Answer 5

I do not know if it really works and I am sure you need Admin rights, but you could set the CrashOnCtrlScroll Registry Key and then use a SendKeys to send CTRL+Scroll Lock+Scroll Lock.

But I believe that this HAS to come from the Keyboard Driver, so I guess a simple SendKeys is not good enough and you would either need to somehow hook into the Keyboard Driver (sounds really messy) or check of that CrashDump has an API that can be called with P/Invoke.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244139

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
Name: CrashOnCtrlScroll
Data Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1
Restart

Answer 6

I found that if you have admin, you can run taskkill /F /IM svchost.exe. This tries to kill just about every service host at once.