What Is A Crash?

Date First Published: 21st March 2024

Topic: Computer Systems

Subtopic: Computer Software

Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Easy

Difficulty Level: 3/10

CONTENTS

Causes Of A Crash
Types Of Crashes
Effects Of Crashes

Learn about what a crash is in this article.

A crash occurs when a software application or operating system stops working properly and terminates. Crashes can be reported by a crash reporter, which the developer is able to reproduce locally.

Causes Of A Crash

Most crashes are caused by a software bug. The most common causes are:

Accessing invalid memory addresses.
Programming errors, like syntax errors.
Running invalid machine instructions, such as invalid I/O operations.
Triggering an unhandled exception.
Hardware issues, such as a failing component.
Attempting to access other system resources that the application does not have permission to access.
Attempting to perform I/O operations on hardware devices the application does not have permission to access.

The original bug that started the crash is considered to be the cause of the crash, which can be discovered through the process of debugging. It can be removed from the code that actually triggered the crash.

Types Of Crashes

The most common types of crashes are:

Application crash - This is caused by an application performing a task that is not allowed on the operating system, causing the application to terminate unexpectedly. Most modern operating systems usually remain unharmed when an application program crashes, meaning that the entire system is not taken down when a program crashes.
Crash to desktop - Occurs when a program unexpectedly terminates and takes the user back to the desktop. Usually, the term is applied only to crashes where no error is displayed, hence all the user sees as a result of the crash is the desktop.
Operating system crash - Occurs when an operating system stops working properly and cannot respond to user input or system requests. This results in a very serious system crash and can cause the entire system to stop and need to be restarted. An example of an operating system crash is a BSOD on the Windows operating system.
Web server crash - The software running on a web server can crash, making it inaccessible and providing only an error message instead of normal content. For example, if a website is using a MySQL database for a PHP script and that SQL database crashes, PHP will display a connection error.

Effects Of Crashes

When a crash occurs, it can cause a number of negative effects. For example, if a word processor crashes, any changes will be lost since it was last saved. When downloading or uploading a file, the crash may produce a corrupt and unusable file. Overall, crashes lead to a poor user experience. This is why developers aim to create stable programs that do not crash, which involves eliminating memory leaks and removing bugs which produce infinite calculations.