This counter counts how many times the lock manager's deadlock search actually confirmed a real deadlock condition among competing processes. Any nonzero value here is a serious signal, since a real deadlock means at least one process had to be forcibly aborted or otherwise resolved by VMS to break the cycle. For example, two processes that lock resources in opposite order, A then B and B then A, could produce an actual deadlock recorded by this counter, requiring the admin to review the offending applications' locking logic.