BugCheck2Linux : Make Windows BSOD Switch to Linux

All Windows users shiver even at the mention BSOD (blue screen of death) that appears when Windows system has crashed. It is that nightmare that all the Windows system admins are afraid of. In the old days, BSOD simply froze the Windows screen and then you had to power off/on the computer while praying that it won’t happen again. In the newer versions of Windows, BSOD is lighter shade of blue, shows more information, saves the crash information and then reboots the PC all by itself.

But if BSOD is not going away because of some corrupt Windows system files and you think that you can do something only if you could boot into Linux, then BugCheck2Linux is for you. Whenever BSOD appears on Windows, BugCheck2Linux drops you into a tiny Linux shell. What you can do with this is entirely up to your Linux shell skills.

BugCheck2Linux

For installing BugCheck2Linux on your system, you can follow these steps:

  1. Download and copy BugCheck2Linux.sys in a folder such as C:\BugCheck.
  2. Open command prompt (Admin) or Windows Terminal and give the following command: 
    sc create BugCheck2Linux binPath=C:\BugCheck\BugCheck2Linux.sys type=kernel start=auto
bcdedit /set TestSigning On

    BugCheck2Linux

  3. Restart your Windows PC.

In the above commands, it creates a service which is automatically run at Windows startup and loads the BugCheck2Linux system driver. The second command disables security check for the drivers because this driver is not digitally signed.

Now whenever you experience BSOD, your system will first show BSOD and then drop into a minimalist Linux shell. The username is root and no password is used for logging into this shell. It is not mouse friendly, so do not even move the mouse when using this shell. You can run some very basic commands when using this shell. It is better to boot into PuppyLinux installed along side Windows.

BugCheck2Linux

If you want to remove BugCheck2Linux from your system, you can reverse all the steps in the following manner:

  1. In a command prompt (Admin) give the following commands: 
    sc stop BugCheck2Linux
sc delete BugCheck2Linux
bcdedit /set TestSigning Off
  2. Restart your PC.
  3. Delete the BugCheck2Linux.sys file from your computer.

You can get BugCheck2Linux from https://github.com/NSG650/BugCheck2Linux.

 

Tagged with