


Windows is Getting Rid of the Blue Screen of Death After 40 Years (theverge.com) 53
The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) has held strong in Windows for nearly 40 years, but that's about to change. From a report: Microsoft revealed earlier this year that it was overhauling its BSOD error message in Windows 11, and the company has now confirmed that it will soon be known as the Black Screen of Death. The new design drops the traditional blue color, frowning face, and QR code in favor of a simplified black screen.
The simplified BSOD looks a lot more like the black screen you'd see during a Windows update. But it will list the stop code and faulty system driver that you wouldn't always see during a crash dump. IT admins shouldn't need to pull crash dumps off PCs and analyze them with tools like WinDbg just to find out what could be causing issues. The company will roll out this new BSOD design in an update to Windows 11 "later this summer."
The simplified BSOD looks a lot more like the black screen you'd see during a Windows update. But it will list the stop code and faulty system driver that you wouldn't always see during a crash dump. IT admins shouldn't need to pull crash dumps off PCs and analyze them with tools like WinDbg just to find out what could be causing issues. The company will roll out this new BSOD design in an update to Windows 11 "later this summer."
BSOD has scaled well (Score:5, Funny)
...and will continue to o so (Score:5, Insightful)
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They considered "beige", "brown", "burgundy", "banana" and "buff" but the Dark Mode Mafia won out.
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I see a blue screen and I want it painted black (Score:2, Redundant)
When was the last time Windows was updated (Score:3)
with something that a user actually wanted.
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Re:When was the last time Windows was updated (Score:4, Insightful)
Tabs in Notepad is not something people wanted. Nor any AI. Nor anything else. Notepad is on the verge of becoming WordPad with all the doodads Microsoft keeps adding to it.
Re: When was the last time Windows was updated (Score:2)
I don't want tabs in notepad. I use it every day. I only wanted multi level undo.
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That can be said of any software. Users don't define their wants, they get sold it by marketing departments. For the most parts users are a poor judge of what is good for them since the value lack of change over anything.
What has Windows introduced that I wanted? Nothing. Ever. What has Windows introduced that has helped no end? Tabs in explorer, unix line endings for notepad, tickbox selection in explorer, a better search system in the start menu, virtual desktop support, the ability to mute notifications,
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A BLACK screen of death is way worse than BLUE (Score:3)
I'm joking, but seriously, colors mean things. I'm half expecting them to switch back to blue in the future because i's less "ominous."
A designer to win an award for the change (Score:2)
I'm joking, but seriously, colors mean things. I'm half expecting them to switch back to blue in the future because i's less "ominous."
I'm expecting a designer to win an award for the change. Precisely became of the more ominous nature of the event. Windows NT should have always had had a more ominous looking crash screen. Its crashes were serious problems. Not the ordinary Win9x crashes, where the calm blue conveyed the "everything is OK, this is normal" nature of a Win9x crash. :-)
It will still die (Score:2)
just with a different colored screen. Microsoft really understood the problem and how to solve it when they learned people hated encountered the blue screen. Another customer complaint understood and resolved. “We’ll use a different color screen.”
Linux just added QR codes (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting that Linux only recently added QR codes to the kernel panic screen, and now Windows is dropping it. The difference is probably that Linux's QR code actually has useful information in it, whereas Windows QR code probably linked to some url that ended up being not helpful.
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IIRC the Windows one just gave the stop code, i.e. the same information displayed as text. There was no additional detail.
At least we get to keep the acronym (Score:2)
Though I suspect a lot of people would have appreciated Fuchsia Screen of Death.
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Though I suspect a lot of people would have appreciated Fuchsia Screen of Death.
Google trademarked that for their Fuchsia operating system. :-)
Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Funny)
BSOD is being ADDED to Linux:
'Blue Screen of Death' Comes To Linux [slashdot.org][2024-06-16]
But being removed from Windows!?!?
There's some sort of joke in this, but I can't think of it at the moment.
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I missed that. Last Linux crash I had was about 10 years back when I told the kernel it had more memory than the machine had....
My monitor is monochrome (Score:2)
There's some sort of joke in this, but I can't think of it at the moment.
How about, makes no difference to me. My monitor is monochrome. :-)
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black and green?
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black and green?
or amber!
I literally have terminals configured for both. I'll open both to help differentiate two tasks. :-)
:-)
Back in the day I owned both, preferring amber.
And spaces not tabs.
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Back in the day I owned both, preferring amber.
LOL. I just realized I prefer amber over green on my dashboard illumination too.
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BSOD? MSOD? (Score:2)
I always Micro$oft was racist! /s
What about the Mauve Screen of Death? That's for when the computer is bricked and/or trying to take over the planet.
BSOD, whats that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BSOD, whats that? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: BSOD, whats that? (Score:3, Informative)
The vast majority of BSODs came from graphics drivers specifically.
Re: BSOD, whats that? (Score:2)
I used SCSI a whole lot back in the long long long ago when it was relevant. I had probably four different SCSI HAs in various Windows PCs I owned and also managed some professionally. I stand by my statement.
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Mostly the stability comes from Microsoft having taken over writing most of the drivers itself and given developers APIs that allow them to access the functionality they need. Back in the crashy-crashy old days developers would write the drivers that the user would install with new products...and each added driver made the system less stable.
BSODs are mostly the domain of hardware faults these days, which are pretty rare unless you're managing an estate of hundreds or more physical boxen. As such PSODs are more common (ESXi's Purple Screen of Death). ECC errors or disk faults usually. Every now and then a failing Mobo or CPU. Same with kernel panics.
Most OSs these days have a pretty graceful failure mode, but there isn't much you can do about bad or failing HW although MS has always handled it better than *nix.
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Our gov't windows 11 images, provided by an outside private company, will BSoD if you look at them sideways. Not Windows 11 fault to be clear, but a bad image (and the company is slow to admit fault, much less fix this issue) and it's a daily issue here.
Very frustrating.
Black is Bad? (Score:1)
A full system crash is a bad thing - most people could agree to this.
So after all the kerfuffle about IDE controllers having master/slave drives, microcode blacklists being offensive, etc. Microsoft of all companies is making their crash screen black?
I don't care but it's shockingly inconsistent.
At least the Andorians won't be offended anymore.
What about anti-cheat DRM in games? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Why would it? Your rant is completely off topic.
Re: What about anti-cheat DRM in games? (Score:2)
A black BSOD ?!? (Score:2)
Eliminating the BSOD (Score:3)
Windows is Getting Rid of the Blue Screen of Death After 40 Years
Don't worry...they're keeping the crashes.
So it will die more creatively now? (Score:2)
To be fair, Windows is rarely crashing these days. Better service quality for all the hackers it lets in!
Windows Enshitification Marches Onward (Score:2)
Thanks for reminding me (Score:2)
Exciting improvement in usabillity (Score:2)
Windows will still crash and lock up all the time, but now there's a new screen with a kicky new color to announce the crash. It's a real Microsoft-style enhancement. When it doesn't work, change the color and give it a new icon.
Next, BSODs wallpapers (Score:2)
Let people customize them with slide shows or a rotating carousel of photos. People would eat that up!
But you still get a Screen of Death.... (Score:2)
Really 40 years? (Score:2)
If my memory serves me right, the blue screen denoting catastrophic error first appeared in Windows 3.1, which means that the BSOD is only 33 years old, not 40.
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What a breakthrough (Score:2)
Invented by Novell (Score:2)
I first encountered the acronym "BSOD" in the context of NetWare 3.x servers, where it stood for "Black Screen of Death" -- some failures would cause the server to stop on a black screen with just a blinking underline cursor in the upper left corner. Later on, Windows introduced their blue error message, and the acronym was repurposed.