Screen of death

A "screen of death" is an error screen displayed by some operating systems, such as home computers and video game consoles after encountering a critical system error, which can cause the system to shut down.

Black screen of death ("an error has occurred")
They are very common in Nintendo consoles, such as the GameCube and Nintendo 3DS, etc.

Red screen of death
They are also very common in the Sony consoles, from the PlayStation 1 to the PlayStation 4.

Causes

 * 1) Technical problems.
 * 2) Damaged disc-reading laser (especially if the console is very old).
 * 3) Dust or other contaminants inside the hardware.
 * 4) Corrupted or damaged data.
 * 5) Disc scratches.
 * 6) Devices such as the controller or the memory card placed incorrectly, etc.