The White Screen of Death (WSoD) or simply “White Death” refers to an error or issue with an operating system that causes the computer or device to stop working and display only a white screen.
The white screen of death most often refers to an Apple iPod or iPhone that has locked up due to the device being severely dropped, a hardware component failing, or an attempted operating system or application upgrade that fails to successfully update. iPod, iPad or iPhone users with a WSoD will see either a completely blank white screen or a frozen display that shows only the Apple logo.
How to Fix the White Screen of Death
As with the more widely known blue screen of death (BSoD) that affects computers running Windows, the white screen of death generally requires a reboot in order to operate properly again. If restarting the device fails to correct the issue, the white screen of death might be resolved by trying one or more of the following: hard rebooting the device, resetting the factory settings, reconnecting the LCD cables to the screen display, or sending the device in for repair if none of the previous options works.
The white screen of death can also refer to other systems or applications that display a white or blank screen in the event of locking up or freezing, including some webpages (especially PHP-generated pages that have been coded with suppressed error reporting), computers running Apple’s Mac OS or Linux operating systems, and even some versions of Windows, although the blue screen of death is much more common on Windows-based devices.
White Screen Monitor testing
Another use of the phrase white screen is found in monitor testing where a white screen is displayed in full screen mode to check for dead pixels, dust particles and similar artifacts.
