Once again Microsoft is changing the (not so) beloved Blue Screen of Death (officially know as Stop Error). Back in the Widows 8 days (August 2012) was when Microsoft made the last significant (color) change to Blue Screen of Death. It was changed to a lighter shade of blue and added a frowny face 🙁 plus did away with hexadecimal code. Then with the release of the Windows 10 Anniversary Edition Update in August 2016, they added a scannable QR code making it easier to diagnose and troubleshoot the issue(s).
Current Windows 11 BSoD: via Forbes
The new (and not improved) version will be rolled out in a Windows 11 update sometime this Summer. The new (harsh) black screen with white text looks similar to the black screen during Windows updates. While it will list the stop code and faulty system driver, there will not be a QR code. This new screen is suppose to make it easier on Windows IT Admins. Since “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 new BSOD in Windows 11. Image: Microsoft
According to Microsoft, the new BSOD is all about ‘clarity’:
“This is really an attempt on clarity and providing better information and allowing us and customers to really get to what the core of the issue is so we can fix it faster,” says David Weston, vice president of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, in an interview with The Verge. “Part of it just cleaner information on what exactly went wrong, where it’s Windows versus a component.”
Microsoft has used a Blue Screen for the last 40-years and made significant improvements (such as the lighter shade and more user friendly information plus adding a QR code), but this seems like a major step backwards. The white text on black background throw me back to the dark ages of PC’s, the pre-Windows days of MS-DOS. Most people in their early 20’s or younger really won’t have any understanding of DOS. Windows XP released in August 2001 was the first version of Windows where the machine booted directly into Windows to your desktop. In the Windows 95/98 days (and even further back) when the machine was finished booting you needed to either type ‘win’ at the C:\> prompt or add ‘win’ as the final line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Then you need to wait another few minutes for Windows to load and finally start up.
via The Verge
