How To Manually Cause a BSoD Crash in Windows 11 & 10

Want to trigger a BSoD crash whenever you want? It’s pretty easy to do in both Windows 11 and Windows 10. Here’s how.

Generally, a BSoD crash occurs when something catastrophic happens, like corrupted system files, memory mismanagement, driver issues, and kernel issues, and your system cannot recover from it. However, there might be instances where you need to cause a BSoD crash intentionally. In those cases, you can use the official Microsoft tool, NotMyFault, to trigger a BSoD crash whenever you want. For instance, an intentional BSoD crash is useful for crash dump analysis, driver testing/development, system stability testing, security research, and educational purposes.

Whatever your specific use case or requirement is, using NotMyFault, you can cause different types of BSoD errors with just a few clicks. In this tutorial, I will show you how to do it in simple steps. Let’s get started.

Before You Start

• BSoD crashes can result in data loss and may lead to system file corruption. Therefore, ensure that you close all programs, save your work, and back up your system before proceeding.
• Administrator rights are required to use the NotMyFault app to cause a BSoD crash.

Cause Intentional BSoD Crash in Windows 11 & 10

1. Get NotMyFault from this page.
2. After downloading, open File Explorer by pressing “Windows key + E”.
3. Find and right-click the NotMyFault zip file.
4. Select the “Extract All” option.
5. Click the “Extract” option.
6. The above action extracts the zip file to the same directory.
7. Open the extracted folder.
8. Double-click the “notmyfault64.exe” file.
9. Click “Yes” in the UAC prompt.
10. Click “Agree“.
11. Go to the “Crash” tab.
12. Select the “High IRQL Fault (Kernel-mode)” option.
13. Click the “Crash” button.
14. With that, the system crashes with a BSoD error.

Detailed Steps (With Screenshots)

As the first step, download the NotMyFault zip file from the official Sysinternals webpage.

Once downloaded, open the File Explorer by pressing the “Windows key + E”, find the downloaded ZIP file in your Downloads folder, right-click it, and select the “Extract All” option.

Click the “Extract” button to extract the ZIP to a new folder in the same directory as the ZIP file.

Now, open the extracted folder and double-click the “notmyfault64.exe” file to launch the NotMyFault app.

You will see a User Account Control (UAC) prompt. Click the “Yes” button. Next, click the “Agree” button.

In the NotMyFault app, go to the “Crash” tab, select the “High IRQL Fault (Kernel-mode)” option, and click the “Crash” button at the bottom.

The above action triggers the DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) and crashes the system because it illegally accessed swappable memory at a high Interrupt Request Level (IRQL).

You can also select the other BSoD options under the “Crash” to simulate different BSoD errors. Here’s what each option does to trigger a BSoD crash in Windows

• High IRQL Fault (Kernel-mode): Tries to access paged swappable memory during a critical system task. i.e., at a high Interrupt Request Level (IRQL).
• Buffer Overflow: A classic case of overflowing the allocated memory, which can potentially corrupt other data.
• Core Overwrite: Somewhat similar to Buffer Overflow, but specifically overwrites the program’s instructions. This can cause a system crash when Windows tries to run the garbage code.
• Stack Trash: This option writes random nonsensical data to the stack used for tracking function calls, which in turn confuses the system and causes a crash.
• High IRQL Fault (User-mode): Somewhat similar to High IRQL Fault (Kernel-mode), but a user-mode indirectly causes an illegal operation within the kernel, such as trying to access swappable memory during a critical system task.
• Stack Overflow: This option simulates the classic driver bug where the application exhausts the available stack space.
• Hardcoded Breakpoint: This option executes a specific instruction (__debugbreak() or similar) that is designed to trigger a breakpoint. If there is no kernel debugger attached, it triggers a BSoD.
• Double Free: Tells the system to release the memory that has already been released.

Note: If you run NotMyFault via the command line with the/crash flag (notmyfaultc.exe /crash), it causes a High IRQL fault (Kernel-mode) crash.

Wrapping Up — Causing Intentional Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) in Windows

As you can see, using the NotMyFault app, you can easily and manually cause a BSoD crash with a variety of errors. As I said earlier, while it is easy, a system crash can result in data loss and system file corruption. So, make sure to save all your work, close all the apps, and back up your system before triggering an intentional and purposeful BSoD crash.

If you have any questions or need help, comment below. I’ll be happy to assist.