[SOLVED] What is a hard crash?

[unplanned bacon]

To my understanding it's when software crashes, can't recover and then the hardware turns off as if you pulled the power cable

 

[Darkbreeze]

A crash is when a software program stops working and then closes. When this occurs, Windows usually creates an entry in the event log to help diagnose the problem.

With a hard crash, that is software related, the application or operating system is simply instantly closed, no chance of recovery, and usually the system will freeze. It may also shut completely down but sometimes you will simply have to power off and back on. If it is hardware related it will more probably shut down.

A soft crash, whether hardware or software related will usually attempt to recover, or restart, or will create a crash debug log or dump file for diagnostic purposes. This might also be considered to be a hang or error.

There are probably a good many variations on the interpretations of what is a crash, hard or soft, or hang, or freeze, or error. And any of these might, or might not, be accompanied by a blue screen. Usually with a hard crash or error there is no chance for the system to react with a bluescreen or crash dump though, as it is generally an instantaneous event.