black screen of death

Similar to the blue screen of death, but with the added bonus of inability to do anything.
A black screen of death consists of, surprise, a black screen, with a cursor in the upper left corner. Usually accompanied by an unresponsive keyboard, and in the case of machines with ATX mobos, an unresponsive power button.

black magic = B = Black Thursday

Black Screen of Death n.

[prob. related to the Floating Head of Death in a famous "Far Side" cartoon.] A failure mode of Microsloth Windows. On an attempt to launch a DOS box, a networked Windows system not uncommonly blanks the screen and locks up the PC so hard that it requires a cold boot to recover. This unhappy phenomenon is known as The Black Screen of Death. See also Blue Screen of Death, which has become rather more common.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.