BSODs in Windows 2000 and XP are technically called STOP errors, which usually happens when the kernel encounters a serious error from which it cannot recover. These things can be caused any which way, usually because of faulty device driver or software that throws an unhandled exception or an illegal operation. Even faulty hardware cause these errors.
The STOP error contains the error code and its symbolic name (ex: 0x0000001E, KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED) as well as four values in parentheses. It displays the address where the problem occurred, along with the driver in question. All of this information can be used to examine why the STOP error is popping up. Without all of the above information, diagnosing and resolving a STOP error may prove near impossible. But usually, the problem usually lies with anything that you have changed/added/removed recently.
Take my case. One fine day, 5 minutes after I booted up the computer, it would go into a STOP error with an UDFS file system error. It popped up over and over again, and I was in no particular mood to reinstall Windows XP and all programs all over again. As always, the STOP error had all the information I had ever needed. It had said there was an error with the UDF system, and I had only one program on my computer that used UDF, Nero InCD, the packet-writing software that used the UDFS. Then I remembered that just three days before the error, I had applied the SP2 compatibility patch for all Nero products, InCD included. Disabling the InCD service from starting automatically, I found the error disappeared and reappeared when I started it manually. It wasnt too tough to put two and two together and a complete reinstall of Nero fixed the problem for good. The next time you get a STOP error, make a note of it in detail and we can most likely fix it, if its caused by a recent change.
TweakXP.com found a "feature" in which it was possible to crash Windows XP manually to get the BSOD. Open regedit, navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
Create a new DWORD value and name it CrashOnCtrlScroll. Right-click on this newly created value and click on Modify and enter 1 in the Value data field and close and reboot. Now you can BSOD your system by holding the right CTRL key and pressing "Scroll Lock" twice. You may need to turn off "Automatically restart" in Startup and Recovery properties (right click My Computer>Properties>Advanced)
The two most famous BSODs in history so far are where the OS BSODed when mighty Bill Gates was presenting it to the media and in November 2004, when over 65000 computers BSODed in the UK government when they migrated from 2000 to XP and applied a patch, making all Microsoft engineers run helter-skelter trying to fix the problem. Of course, I am sure you would all know about the funny screensavers that use a BSOD, including the ones in Linux.