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Microsoft Windows

Microsoft is Redesigning the Windows BSOD And It Might Change To Black (theverge.com) 68

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Microsoft has announced that it's overhauling its Blue Screen of Death error message in Windows 11. From a report: The new design drops the traditional blue color, frowning face, and QR code in favor of a simplified screen that looks a lot more like the black screen you see when Windows is performing an update. It's not immediately clear if this new BSOD will remain as a black screen once Microsoft ships the final version of this update.

"We're previewing a new, more streamlined UI for unexpected restarts which better aligns with Windows 11 design principles and supports our goal of getting users back into productivity as fast as possible," explains Microsoft in a blog post about the change. "We've simplified your experience while preserving the technical information on the screen."
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Microsoft is Redesigning the Windows BSOD And It Might Change To Black More

Microsoft is Redesigning the Windows BSOD And It Might Change To Black

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  • I see a blue screen (Score:5, Funny)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Monday March 31, 2025 @10:46AM (#65271561)
    and I want it painted black...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      Damn now ive got that song playing out in my head at length.

    • And who says Microsoft doesn't innovate any more? Changing the colour of the BSOD is the most creative thing they've done in at least ten, if not fifteen years.

  • "Crash Better"

  • "none more black"

  • Black works... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter@tedata.neBLUEt.eg minus berry> on Monday March 31, 2025 @10:51AM (#65271577) Journal

    At least then we won't have to change the initialism.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Shag ( 3737 )

      Yeah, but it still feels kinda low-hanging fruit.
      Might as well be the Brown Screen of Death.
      Why not go beyond the 8-colors box of crayons?
      Beige Screen of Death.
      Burgundy Screen of Death.

  • So black is the new blue?

    Do I see a TV drama series in the making?

    At least the acronym won't have to be updated.

    • You joke but there's a TV writer reading this who is gonna run to a producer about how he's got the idea for yet another cop show.

      • The police department an a medium sized town in some region known for racism get a new police chief after the entire department is fired for being TOO corrupt. She's a black woman appointed by the governor (on purpose or by mistake? find out in season 2 or 3), new to the position of chief and transplanted from LA or New York or Detroit and brings a dozen of the black officers she's worked with over the years to kick-start the new department.

        Writes itself.

        • And meanwhile it'll be 23 years ago since The Wire was aired and to this day no show has really handled all those issues regarding police any better.

  • If it ain't broke. DON'T FIX IT!

    How many people at Microsoft only have a job because they keep inventing new things to change? (When the current version is good, save for some performance, security and stability fixes)

    • It's broken, it's Microsoft.

    • There's a limit to how many people you can add to a development project before it gets impossible to work with. I guess Microsoft gets around that by adding a lot of non-developer roles to the process.

    • That's the problem of software in a nutshell. Software is a tool. At some point your tool reaches peak effectiveness. Any further changes are a detriment. But software writers have to get paid so they continue making changes.

      • Thank you very much. You are talking about 2005ish. Everything since then is either bling or surveillance spun out as "innovation". Software is now a make work project for the "information economy". Use open source for core functionality, and don't look back.
  • So we'll get a blank screen instead of information to help diagnosis?

  • too much to ask (Score:4, Interesting)

    by toxonix ( 1793960 ) on Monday March 31, 2025 @11:25AM (#65271643)

    The BSOD appears so frequently that they feel the need to overhaul its design. "Unexpected restarts" is their way of saying the OS still crashes uncontrollably because it's full of garbage that can't be tested or made stable.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Consumer hardware is unreliable. On top of that, MS Windows is poor at recovering from errors. And the poorly managed packaging system for third party drivers leads to a lot of situations where a system cannot boot or continue. Safe mode exists because Microsoft acknowledges how bad their software is at managing the driver start up and packaging.

    • This is just so that consumers familiar with "blue screen" won't see one.

      It's not the design that needs overhauled. It's the automatic restart setting when they show important information but then never reveal it again. They need to display this AFTER the reboot instead. And give you a way to see it without using third party utilities (and without a consumer having to dive into Event Viewer.

      Just getting the information about a blue screen error relayed from a user to a technical person is needlessly compl

      • Now there could be an actual use for an "AI" type thing, since BSOD on Win10/11 pretty much means driver/hardware problem if it could look at the problem and make a deterministic guess based on the (I assume) millions of reports MS has cataloged of what might have caused the issue. Even if it's as simple as "Based on other reports this crash could due to a graphics malfunction".

        I get with all the combination of hardware and drivers and bad PSU's a hardware crash is rough to track, it's like reading tea lea

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      Like SpaceX and the unintentional rapid disassembly?

    • The BSOD appears so frequently that they feel the need to overhaul its design.

      Yep, that happens when you are a combination of the world's most popular OS, and the world's biggest target for aftermarket computer rubbish with drivers coded by the lowest paid employee in India.

      Windows virtually never BSODs. Bad hardware and shitty drivers BSODs it. Sidenote I actually had my first BSOD in about 7 years only two weeks ago. Actually two BSODs in short succession. Turns out if you're a gamer with a 40 series or 50 series card don't run NVIDIA"s 572.70 driver right now. It's rubbish. Rolled

  • The acronym stays the same, so everything will be okay. It will still be a BSOD.

  • Looks like an excellent spot for an ad. How about Office365! It would be a great place to showcase the reliability of our Office products family.

  • Windows 11 Sucks (Score:4, Informative)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Monday March 31, 2025 @11:40AM (#65271693) Journal

    Been running MacOS and Linux at home, and Server 2016 via RDP at work for a few years now, and had the misfortune of setting up a Windows 11 laptop today.

    All I can say is that Windows sucks horribly. I cannot believe just how unusable, cluttered and full of marketing crap it is.

  • Multicolour BOSD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Monday March 31, 2025 @11:55AM (#65271729)

    Up until Win Win3.x (and I suspect 9x as well), you could change the color of the SOD by tweaking some ini files, BRING THE FEATURE BACK!!!

    • Bring the feature BACK!!!

      Bring the feature black!

    • I pine for the simpler days of DOS, when hardware was buggy and all you got was a blank screen with the text:

      Parity Check 2

      You could have it in any color you wanted, as long as it was green on black.

      Software problem? That would usually just freeze up on whatever you were looking at.

    • This. Anything on black background is near unreadable with my maculopathy.

  • Instead of fiddling with the colour of the BSoD, put the frowning face and QR code for the less computer saavy, and an actual (and ussefull) error message for those of us who are slightly more saavy.

    JM2C, YMMV

  • I smell an upcoming... (Score:5, Funny)

    by weinrich ( 414267 ) on Monday March 31, 2025 @12:07PM (#65271781)

    ...Executive Order requiring Microsoft to reverse all it's clearly DEI-driven decisions since the creation of BSOD, and make it the WSORUKP (White Screen of Rapid Unscheduled Kernel Panic) to ensure no Windows Users will be subjected to Far Left rhetoric in the form of anti-American colors like Blue or the deceptively tricky use of no color (aka: Black) being displayed on their computer screens.

  • If they can force the UX designers to concentrate on the crash screen, maybe they can stop fucking with the main interface for more than an iteration or two and let things stabilize again.

  • apologies to Mick and Keith and the boys, but I couldn't resist.

    "BSOD It Black"

    I see the screen, it’s blue again,
    Flashing warnings, my world’s in pain.
    I close my eyes and then I see,
    A black screen’s staring back at me.

    BSOD, it’s time to go,
    Can’t fix the crash, don’t you know?
    With every bug, I want to scream,
    But now they’re changing up the theme.
    I’ll BSOD it black, yeah, I’ll BSOD it black!

    I looked away, what did I find?
    A black screen, it’s redefine

  • When Windows 12 crashes, it will boot into BSD Unix.

    Command-line, full-screen, white on black.

    Paid upgrades available for amber or green options.

  • unexpected restarts

    Like SpaceX and their "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly".

    (Cute names don't make things better.)

    Windows BSOD And It Might Change To Black

    Blue or black, it'll still be BSOD ...

  • So this is Microsoft thinking of the environment and saving TONNES of energy!!!
    Well done.

  • The issue is not the colour (Score:3)

    by GeekWithAKnife ( 2717871 ) on Monday March 31, 2025 @12:41PM (#65271897)
    It's the cause. Once it was windows.exe or run.dll causing fatal errors but tomorrow it's likely to be AI. ASOD - coming to a billboard near you. I suppose if it is black it'll save power in some airport terminals?!

  • This seems like a pointless project.

    When was the last time you saw a BSOD? And what are you actually going to do other than reboot.

    "Your system encountered a problem that we cannot recover from and will reboot in 30 seconds" - Done. That's all the vast, vast majority of windows users needs to see.

    Does it need to be any more verbose than that?

  • Wouldn't surprise me that's the level of thinking they have around there.

    Well, the OS is completely perfect, working correctly in all circumstances and requiring no upgrades or modification. How do we make old stuff seem shiny and new again to keep that capitalist lustre going?

    BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH ... I gotta admit, when put like that, it sounds pretty good. too bad the os aint

  • In a large lab/office, a tech can spot a BSOD from across the room. Black screen, not so much.

  • The traditional design is #0000ff with white font.

  • User: "My computer is displaying a black error screen."

    Tech: "Have you tried rebooting it?"

    User: "I tried, but I can't see the power switch on the case."

    Tech: "Why not?"

    User: "Well, all the power went off in the building and its too dark to see anything under my desk."

    .

    .

    .

    Tech: "Do you still have the box your PC came in?"

  • "black screen of death" will be ripe with outrage from the easily offended, "color blind" groups.
  • Given how bad their bugs in the software are already there is zero reason to even consider changing that screen. Everyone knows what that screen means. Completely pointless.
  • Imagine what personal computing would have been if Microsoft would have let other companies grow, and not try to kill the competition for the last 50 years.
  • Accidental Racists Microsoft?

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