GPF

Webopedia Staff
Last Updated May 24, 2021 7:44 am
Short for General Protection Fault, a computer condition that causes a Windows application to crash. The most common cause of a GPF is two applications trying to use the same block of memory, or more specifically, one application trying to use memory assigned to another application.

The following situations can also cause GPFs.

  • Running an application with insufficient resources
  • Using improper hardware device drivers
  • Corrupted or missing Windows files
  • Applications exchanging data that cannot be read
  • GPFs are often preceded by an invalid page fault.