Microsoft Tests New 'Green Screen of Death' On Latest Windows 10 Builds

An anonymous reader writes: Windows 10 Insider builds will now feature Green Screen of Death (GSOD) instead of the classic Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error page we have all become accustomed to. The change was teased on Twitter by Matthijs Hoekstra, Senior Program Manager for Windows Enterprise Developer Platform, and spotted by a user that goes by the nickname of Chris123NT. According to Hoekstra, only Windows 10 Insider builds will feature the green error screen, while stable Windows 10 versions will continue to use the classic blue-themed error page. Hoekstra didn't elaborate on the reasons behind the color change, but the color-coded error screens would allow Microsoft support staff to triage bugs and prioritize customers.

Microsoft finally fixed the BSOD

[richrz]

They turned it green.

Re: Microsoft finally fixed the BSOD

[Anonymous Coward]

They forgot the chlorine and it went scummy.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

In order to be 'Modern' redhat derivatives will soon have systemd-gsod.

Re:Microsoft finally fixed the BSOD

[TheRaven64]

The XBox has had a Green Screen of Death since quite early on. In one of the early demos, it blue-screened while Bill Gates was showing it off. He told the engineers that it must never blue screen again... so they made it green. I suspect that making it green on pre-release versions is simply to make it obvious that it isn't a production version that's crashed. You expect some instability if you're running a testing version and if someone takes photos of it crashing then it's easy to point at and say 'it's green, it's a beta'.

Re:

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

They turned it green.

This is the forward-thinking kind of innovation that makes Microsoft so awesome.

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[Chris Katko]

If it was Apple, they'd call it a "courageous error logging" to allow for "continuous system improvement."

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[hawk]

more often, the able solution is to not crash in the first place . . . :)

hawk

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[hAckz0r]

After consulting with all the new Trump cabinet members whom are knowledgeable in science, there was a major move by Microsoft to help save the [Ecology]^h^h^h^h^h^h^h Economy. After speaking with their elite scientists on Marketing Hyperbole, not only can Investors now say that Microsoft's "new technology" (NT kernel) is "green", but due to the (now hear this) "actual laws of physics", it is undeniable that using the green wavelength rather than a blue one does actually save electricity! Seeing the numbe

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[Tablizer]

Customer: "Help! There's brown smelly shit leaking from my pipes."

MS Plumber: "Okay, just a second ... There! Now it's green smelly shit. Fixed!"

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[syntotic]

It is a MUSLIM attack. Green means marihuana to them, at least, so now whenever there is a failure they will hear: that damned GREEN... and associate the emotion to a plant. To be serious the BSOD should be a BLACK screen. Keep the STANDARD abbreviation! Problem is, to Africans and Indians, GREEN has deleterious and special and occult and hidden meanings we Humans do not pick up but for them are connatural. Oh, this is not a bit of opinion, but hard, acquired knowledge anyone with the right mind frame can o

Re:

[Ol Olsoc]

Green Spew of Doom Get Sick or Die and countless others.

Don't MS have anything better to do?

Me for an OS that doen't Bluscreen or GreenScreen - just works.

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[Kaenneth]

Most BSODs now are from Hardware failure, like overclocking/overheating/ram corruption, etc.

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[LVSlushdat]

Yeah I get a lockup every month or so on Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04.. Strongly suspect its a bit flip somewhere in my non-ECC 8Gb of ram. Pity the laptop (Dell Precision M4400) doesn't do ECC...

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[PingSpike]

Right, it'll say "Something happened" with a frown emoji. The message will still be crystal clear even to dogs.

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[Kaenneth]

You'll figure that out when you try to read the log file from the disk.

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[magarity]

It even says right there in the summary that the color changes will help helpdesk triage customers. When some non-technical user calls to complain they can more easily report "the screen is blue" or "the screen is green" than to relay a long string of error codes. So, yes, they should have thought about when a non-technical customer says "I'm blue-green colorblind!"

Who is the dipshit with the snarky un-thought through answer, exactly?

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[EndlessNameless]

So, yes, they should have thought about when a non-technical customer says "I'm blue-green colorblind!"

Who is the dipshit with the snarky un-thought through answer, exactly?

You.

There is no blue-green colorblindess. It's either red-green or blue-yellow.

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[jbengt]

People affected by tritan color blindness [color-blindness.com] confuse blue with green and yellow with violet.

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[Holi]

I love when people speak shit with such conviction. It makes reading posts such as yours far more amusing then they deserve to be.

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[UnknownSoldier]

> There is no blue-green colorblindess. It's either red-green or blue-yellow.

BZZT. Thanks for playing.

Monochromacy - Sees everything in black and white. Example [sqspcdn.com]
Deuteranopes - Confuse Blue-greens with grey and mid-pinks
Tritanopes - The most common confusion are light blues with greys, dark purples with black, mid-greens with blues and oranges with reds.
Protanopia - Confuses some blues with some reds, purples and dark pinks; confuses Mid-greens with some oranges.

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[syntotic]

There is: Africans cannot discern them well, blue from green. It is the SAME, like for us red and orange are also interchangeable for practical matters. And they are ALSO somewhat like deuteranopes: THEY CANNOT SEE PINK. Like in the phrase: dead hands. They all have dead hands, ie, pink hands seen as a corpse grey or greenish... Ask them, interpret what they reply under this optic (pun unintended but embedded in language).

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[CommanderRyalis]

Actually that's a linguistic oddity not an issue with colorblindness. In Linguistics there is a principle called Linguistic Relativity that basically says the structure of your language affects the speakers world view. My Linguistics professor explanation is that those tribes had no word for green, thus explained the color as a shade of blue. See Linguistic relativity and the color naming debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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[magarity]

There is no blue-green colorblindess. It's either red-green or blue-yellow.

Whoever told you that was mistaken and you never bothered to check.

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[houstonbofh]

so this won't be good for people who are green color blind

Only if it also had red letters... Green and black worked quite well for many years.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

That's some out of the box thinking right there.

I'd have thought they'd concentrate on fixing their own drivers they broke in anniversary but green? Good call!

Re: Wow

[mspohr]

What's a screen of death?
I haven't seen this in Linux or OSX.

Re:

[TheRaven64]

On Linux, it's called a kernel panic. On OS X, it is as well but you get a tasteful grey box in the middle of the screen telling you in four languages to reboot the system.

Re: Wow

[mspohr]

Thanks.
Never seen either on my systems.

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[dunkelfalke]

I just got one on my debian NAS. "kernel panic, not syncing. fatal exception in interrupt." So much for kernel backports.

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[Ol Olsoc]

On OS X, it is as well but you get a tasteful grey box in the middle of the screen telling you in four languages to reboot the system.

Which I have seen exactly twice since I started on OS X. BSODS? They are just a regular part of the Windows experience.

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[TheRaven64]

How many third-party drivers do you have installed on your Mac? How many do you have installed on the Windows machines that you see crash regularly?

Re:

[Ol Olsoc]

How many third-party drivers do you have installed on your Mac? How many do you have installed on the Windows machines that you see crash regularly?

I haven't counted them, but probably about the same number. The third party thing is interesting though, because Apple writes many/all of their drivers, and Microsoft has decided that it is easier to blame the manufacturers.

Either way, Windows is unstable, and OSX is not. I don't care who's "fault" it is. Because it is what it is.

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[Holi]

If you are getting constant BSODs you have a piece of bad hardware. It's pretty much a flat out lie now a days to say they are part of the windows experience.

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[LVSlushdat]

OR... A bad driver - take Windows 10 (PLEASE!!) with Nvidia video, where you WANT to use the latest driver from Nvidia, but Windows 10/Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom want you to only use the craptacular "Nvidia" driver that is provided by WindowsUpdate. Said craptacular driver blows frequent BSOD's with the blame directed right back at that craptacular video driver. You can play whack-a-mole and keep trying to install the good driver from Nvidia and WU will keep taking it off and putting the craptacul

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[Ol Olsoc]

If you are getting constant BSODs you have a piece of bad hardware. It's pretty much a flat out lie now a days to say they are part of the windows experience.

Yeah, and everyone else. What you just made is the age old assertion that any problem yu have is the fault of anything else but Windows. I have a few, and the people who come to me have a number of them.

They are all so damn stupid. I've been working hard to move them to OS' where they aren't so stupid. Lying? Mebbe. Can't think of a reason why though.

But Windows is exceptionally brittle, and people in here act like it is exactly how working with a computer is supposed to be.

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[houstonbofh]

That's some out of the box thinking right there.

I'd have thought they'd concentrate on fixing their own drivers they broke in anniversary but green? Good call!

Probably just a nod to the computing of yesteryear. ;)

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[gweihir]

There are stable versions of Windows 10? Oh, right, they mean versions where the spying on user activities and data works reliably.

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[haruchai]

Those are the NSA-approved builds

Rainbow of Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

In another 90 years, they'll have run out of the visible spectrum, and we'll get the Ultra-Violet Screen of Death.

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[TWX]

Sounds real horrorshow. Viddy well, brothers! Viddy well!

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[Holi]

That will be for hardware errors only, software errors will have an infrared screen o' death. It will be great for the blind as they will be able to feel the error.

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[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Holi, I noticed your sig and it made me wonder...

"Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy."

So does that mean that gingers pass through unchanged?

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[Ol Olsoc]

That will be for hardware errors only, software errors will have an infrared screen o' death. It will be great for the blind as they will be able to feel the error.

The liberal ones will feel the Bern.

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[Nunya666]

In another 90 years, they'll have run out of the visible spectrum, and we'll get the Ultra-Violet Screen of Death.

In another 90 years, MS will be a distant memory.

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[AvitarX]

People keptnsaying IBM would go away, not for 90 years, but I've been hearing it for 20.

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[haruchai]

In another 90 years, they'll have run out of the visible spectrum, and we'll get the Ultra-Violet Screen of Death.

In another 90 years, MS will be a distant memory.

I wonder if anyone in the late 19th century thought that National Cash Register and Tabulating Machine companies would last over 100 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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[UnknowingFool]

Please. Let's go past ultra-violet and get to plaid.

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[santiago]

The Ultra-Violet Screen of Death is your friend the Computer's means to humanely euthanize Citizens who exceed their security clearance.

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[MercTech]

I was thinking that a green screen of death was an allusion to Win10 being rotten at the core. .... tongue firmly in cheek.

Color coded errors

[Anonymous Coward]

Because god forbid they actually give us informative error messages. We might figure out how Windows works!

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[TWX]

I used to agree with you. Honestly I did.

Then I realized that the vast majority of users were not going to read what was on the screen. Even if the Helpdesk person asked them what the error said they were not going to be able to provide any useful feedback. Hell, users used to be instructed to call-in when the antivirus software popped up, and even then we couldn't get useful info, half of the time they thought "Win32" was the name of the virus as part of "Win32/..."

Forget about getting the user to

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[Kaenneth]

No, the Virus is call system32, I'm sure you can find instructions on removing it online.

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[haruchai]

No, the Virus is call system32, I'm sure you can find instructions on removing it online.

Or toss it and upgrade to system76 - https://system76.com/ [system76.com]

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[fisted]

Maybe it is whatever crap you have installed? Ask your package manager who a particularly large directory or file belongs to.
System folder my ass.

This has been a thing for a long time

[TWX]

There was a registry tweak to change the color of the Screen of Death. I always liked setting it to the Fuschia Screen of Death. Though we did joke about the Chartreuse Screen of Death, so I guess Microsoft listened to that particular suggestion instead...

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[Dunbal]

I doubt that. I'm sure it's hardcoded in a binary somewhere.

I would hate to see your programs. I bet you call all your variables a,b,c,i and x too right? There is zero difference in performance if a program loads a value into a variable at program initialization versus being assigned a value during a function call. Pretty sure that the color of the crash screen is not assigned only when a fault condition is detected but rather forms part of a whole range of data that Windows carries around in memory once it loads.

MS engineers responsible need to be told to keep it simple, stupid.

Oh I see what the problem is. You're just not familia

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[Dunbal]

when most of those variables won't even be used.

Critical things - like how to handle a crash state - are ALWAYS loaded because you never know when you'll crash. Non critical things like perhaps your printer driver or some exotic font can be loaded later if there's a need and/or relegated to some paged memory.

If they weren't stupid, it would BSOD at all

[raymorris]

> A screen that is displayed if memory corruption or a hardware error or kernel fault occurs is going to zip off to the registry to try to read its desired colour from a key somewhere? ...
> the MS engineers responsible need to be told to keep it simple, stupid.

If MS engineers were smart, most of us wouldn't ever seen a BSOD. QED they are not smart, and do stuff like putting this in the registry, a binary blob of everything.

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[Holi]

Are you ok with being wrong all the time. I mean you just stated your belief with such conviction while at the same time being so completely wrong. I mean this has been a thing for almost 20 years. (since at least 2000, not sure about NT4)

https://www.petri.com/change_b... [petri.com]

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[hey!]

It used to be a setting in SYSTEM.INI; back in the NT4 days you got BSOD so frequently it was worth changing the color just to add a little variety to your day.

It probably still is in SYSTEM.INI; I'd check but it's been years since I've had a Windows machine.

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[TWX]

That might have been it. Now that I look back on it I haven't done it in close to 20 years. It was a fun thing to mess with before I discovered Linux.

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[odysseus_complex]

Back in the day there was a product from VentureCom that added a real-time HAL to Windows NT. It used a green screen of death to differentiate between crashes due to Windows and those due to RTX.

What, they have nothing important to fix???

[gweihir]

MS has always been a collection of incompetent, arrogant morons, but this is getting ridiculous.

Godzilla

[LordKronos]

Green screen? Like the video production technique? I welcome error screens that allow us to composite in Godzilla destroying our unsaved documents.

Ha! I'm red/green color blind

[rsilvergun]

no more crashes for me. I hope rest of you yahoos with your working rods and cones enjoy your crashtastic computers.

IE -> Edge, BSOD -> GSOD

[hcs_$reboot]

Same as IE. Only the color changes.

Re:IE - Edge, BSOD - GSOD

[CannonballHead]

Edge is definitely not the same as IE. I am still running into things that work in Edge and fail in IE. And a few the other way around, but not with regard to javascript or css support.

Re:

[hcs_$reboot]

Are we talking about the latest IE (11?)

go green!

[kiviQr]

Microsoft is becoming Green! - nice PR move.

Hoekstra? We ain't no Apple users.

[Opportunist]

We don't care what color you paint the turd. Fix the security and privacy problems your system has, until you do this, color us unimpressed.

Purple

[darkain]

I prefer PURPLE thank you very much! https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]

Been Green Before

[CharlieG]

Back before Windows 3.1 (Yes, I was running windows then, in fact I was on the 3.1 beta) there were no GPFs, they WERE UAEs (unrecoverable application errors). The screen was green

BTW, there was actually a joke on the Beta forums, when one of the Devs said "I promise you will NEVER get another UAE, but that is because we renamed them GPFs"

Changing the colors is not enough.

[roovis]

Just make 'em theme-able. Sell themed crash screens on the Windows store for 99 cents.

Re:Changing the colors is not enough.

[PPH]

Sell advertising space?

Stable?

[organgtool]

Windows 10 Insider builds will feature the green error screen, while stable Windows 10 versions will continue to use the classic blue-themed error page

I think that's setting the bar pretty low for the term "stable".

You have to admit

[mridoni]

In terms of innovation, it still beats rounded corners

BSODs are still a thing?

[Harold Halloway]

I've not seen one in many years. Still, haters gonna hate.

How about details

[Billly Gates]

Windows 7 was so awesome ... Well for Windows I guess and MS threw it away.

The bsod have a silly scan code WTF and no details. On 7/XP you see something like Nvidia.dll caused X etc. Great so we know whats caused it. Win 10 a silly scan code like I have a scanner on hand and a 0xo457ef7, ox05e. No more details!

At home I have to install the bloated windows SDK just for windbg.Exe. At work I am helpless! God I hate Win 10 in many ways. Fix it

Insider builds only

[maestroX]

As article summary says, traditional BSOD will remain (though with less info than WinXP) on released builds, green on insider only. I don't know what the fuss is about

Green means go as go ahead and reboot testers

[Joe_Dragon]

Green means go as go ahead and reboot testers

PC ran into a problem

[suman28]

First, my PC is quite stationary. The first thing I did when I stood up my PC was to chop off its legs, so it can't run into anything including problems. Second of all, if my PC has issues, why does Microsoft recommend that I restart? I strongly feel that it should be my computer that restarts to resolve problems

Is nothing sacred!?

[linear a]

Is nothing sacred!?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The Ultimate Personalization

[Justt Some Guy]

Think about it::
Choose your own custom Screen of Death color. They can add a setting under Personalization to make it match your Desktop (Or another check box to make it use an accent color).

And now.... * POOF * ... The BSOD becomes an upgrade. It's not that their software sucks or is crashing, they were actually adding another feature feature the whole time and they just now reached the final version..

Gosh, I guess they were thinking about us the whole time, huh?

Still necessary...

[hackel]

God forbid they design a decent operating system that doesn't need a "screen of death" in the first place. No, why would anyone want that? The fact that there are still people using Windows in this day and age truly boggles the mind.

Groundbreaking

[Fieryphoenix]

I applaud Microsoft for having the courage to move on and do something new that betters all of us.

Replace Error Handling With the Guru

[Pauldow]

Maybe some day they'll put in an advanced error handling utility like the Amiga Guru Meditation.

Next step...

[hyades1]

No doubt Microsoft's next move will be an attempt to convince people it's just a screen saver.

How about

[khelms]

http://recruitingdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2016/05/tumblr_static_hal_malfunction.gif [recruitingdaily.com]

It makes sense

[stikves]

This will allow customer service to know whether you were running a production build (blue), versus a test one (green). This kind of techniques are used in many companies, and while test build issues are important, they are not as high priority as production ones.