Check Out The New Blue Screen of Death in Windows 8

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=271674969519070&set=pu.184357191584182&type=1&theater

by chiphazard • 15 years ago

114 80 15 years ago

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chiphazard2• 15 years ago

Although BSD's are never cool but this one is way better then the old one.

piers2• 15 years ago

Looks like they've finally realised that few people read what's on the BSOD so there's no point in displaying it.

chiphazard2• 15 years ago

Hahah. Correct

vogonj3• 15 years ago

au contraire, they probably realized that people see the text on a BSOD, freak the fuck out, and go crazy wondering what's wrong with their computer.

now at least they expose only the most useful information to the user ("you need to restart", "here's a thing you can search for to find more information") instead of crazy stuff like "beginning physical memory dump" and STOP codes.

gvkalra• 15 years ago

Next they'll write "Sorry ... Windows just peed .... Please restart to clean up!!"

redcap• 15 years ago

A frowny is a defacto (Western) Internet standard indicating sadness or disappointment. In Japan you could possibly write ;_;

You could also look upon it as a relation to Apple's "Sad Mac" that's been around for probably more than 20 years.

Personally I think having a bit of personality takes the edge away from the harshness of a BSOD.

savoytruffle• 15 years ago

Of course in the days of the Sad Mac, that was only upon a failed boot. When it crashed it showed a cartoony round bomb with a lit fuse on the end. Made people mad!

stevenbedrick• 15 years ago

I've always liked Neal Stephenson's description of the little bomb icon:

"When a Macintosh got into trouble it presented you with a cartoon of a bomb, which was funny the first time you saw it."[1]

1: http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

beedogs• 15 years ago

I liked it when they had the STOP code and the memory dump. There was something... useful? about it.

This removes that information and replaces it with a 72 point emoticon.

darklajid• 15 years ago

How many people in your inner circle were able to make _any_ use of that information?

I'm not sure what to think about the emoticon (don't like those too much), but I don't think something valuable to the general public was lost here..

sid02• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure they're still going to have the memory dump.

jamesgeck0• 15 years ago

The STOP code is still there. It's small in that screenshot, but the bottom line reads "You can search for the error online: HAL INITIALIZATION FAILED".

maratd2• 15 years ago

I'm sure all the relevant data is recorded in the event log, which is how it should be done. In fact, I do believe that's what the error message says in smaller font.

runjake2• 15 years ago

This is because the vast majority of Windows users have no clue about any of the information presented.

And the people who CAN use that information analyze the .dmp files on the filesystem. The .dmp files have the same info plus more.

duskwuff• 15 years ago

The Sad Mac is no longer used, actually -- I believe it was removed from the ROM in NewWorld PPC machines (iMac G3 and newer). Current machines just display a circle/slash symbol on POST failure.

addandsubtract• 15 years ago

The new era of function follows form.

mosburger3• 15 years ago

If you don't want to/can't login to Facebook: http://i.imgur.com/72rry.jpg

m0tive• 15 years ago

I didn't have to login to see it, maybe the permissions on the picture changed?

mosburger3• 15 years ago

Perhaps! I had to login on my iPad and it was kinda annoying, thought I'd help the masses. :)

raphman• 15 years ago

Thanks, I have completely blocked *.facebook.com in my main browser due to privacy concerns.

chucknthem• 15 years ago

Thanks! I'm on HN from China and facebook is completely blocked (There are vpn/proxy options, but not worth setting up for a short stay).

mosburger3• 15 years ago

I'm a little surprised there's only English on that screen. Perhaps they localize it? That seems potentially flakey to do if the system is in an unstable state.

OSX's Kernel Panic screen has a handful of languages explaining what happened.

EDIT: I suppose they could generate the text/page statically when the OS is installed and every time the locale is changed thereafter. If that is what they do, it's better than what OSX does.

nemetroid• 15 years ago

Windows BSOD's have "always" (as long as I can remember) been localised. I would guess your assumption is correct, since it's entirely possible to install Windows without English support (I don't use OSX, but a quick search gave the impression that English is non-removable there).

azharb• 15 years ago

Couldn't really see it from my phone but is that a comma next to 'handle'? Looks like wrong use of a comma.

Rusky3• 15 years ago

A lot of people are seeing this as useless- one commenter called it "function follows form."

I actually think this one's better- with "You can search for the error online: SOME_ERROR_CODE_HERE" it will overwhelm less people and get more people to a place they can find help.

hamidpalo• 15 years ago

Problem with that is that it would lead to a SEO battle of "pay to remove your viruses from your rams and boost your registries" sites.

TeMPOraL• 15 years ago

There's ton of crap in search results for STOP codes already.

Rusky3• 15 years ago

That's Google's problem. If Microsoft can give people exactly enough information about the problem that, for example, their knowledge base site can give them some options, I don't see why that's a bad thing.

gospelwut• 15 years ago

Insofar as the dump file still gets stored somewhere, I don't see why this is bad either. Most of the time, in modern versions, BSODs are hardware/driver related and require somebody half-competent to diagnose it.

schrototo• 15 years ago

Why does it use an ASCII emoticon instead of an actual graphic that isn't turned on its side?

mauriciob• 15 years ago

That is a 'kernel panic' screen. The lighter, the better.

wmeredith• 15 years ago

I hate stuff like this. When you or your product just fucked up the UX, it is not the time to be cutesy.

shriphani• 15 years ago

You do understand what a BSOD is right ?

RexRollman2• 15 years ago

Is the comma really needed after the word handle?

fferen• 15 years ago

Yes, it comes before a conjunction separating independent clauses.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/commas.htm

RexRollman2• 15 years ago

I think it looks bad when separating only two clauses.

Raphael• 15 years ago

Google Chrome already has this feature.

chrome://crash/

alimbada• 15 years ago

Not anymore it seems.

troymc• 15 years ago

I get a navy blue screen, with white graphics in the middle:

[Icon of a browser with two tabs open, and a :( rotated 90 degrees clockwise in the middle]

Aw, Snap!

Something went wrong while displaying this web page. To continue, reload or go to another page.

Learn more

and the "Learn more" is a hyperlink to https://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=9...

jcromartie• 15 years ago

I think you mean about:crash

But, yes, it looks like Microsoft took a rather direct cue from Chrome.

ConstantineXVI• 15 years ago

...who cribbed it from old-school Apple. The original design for the "Sad Tab"[1] is fairly similar to the Sad Mac[2] errors from the original Macintosh. This sort of error screen isn't a totally original design.

[1] https://skitch.com/constantinexvi/f3ybu/new-tab (Chrome originally used this design everywhere, but now use a mildly different one outside of Mac builds)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sad_mac.png

anigbrowl• 15 years ago

minus the helpful error code. I find it infuriating that it doesn't provide any hint about why it has crashed.

lukeschlather• 15 years ago

Looks like an improvement. Though I think it should also say something to the effect of "If you've seen this screen more than twice today, you should have a professional examine your computer for problems."

sneak3• 15 years ago

Show that one to a doctor or lawyer.

toddmorey• 15 years ago

Seems like the modern Microsoft is willing to inject a surprising amount of humanity into their projects. Wether you agree with the new direction or not, you do have to applaud how bold they've been recently. (You could argue they have to be bold considering the computing world seems to be trending away from the business desktop towards personal devices, but it's still impressive to see these bolder moves actually emerge from a large company. The thing about Microsoft is that when they need to shift strategy, they usually can. That's why you can never rule them out.)

sneak3• 15 years ago

After just watching tech reviewers have to retry swipe gestures three, four, five times and also miss too-small touch zones (in that Win8 tablet video Gruber recently posted) I think it's safe to continue ruling them out, "modern Microsoft" or no.

They still just fundamentally don't get it.

jroseattle2• 15 years ago

It's pre-beta.

nitrogen• 15 years ago

I'm a Linux user the vast majority of the time, and dislike Microsoft's tactics as much as the next guy, but going from "[a few touchscreen bugs]" to "just fundamentally don't get it" is quite the logical leap. Fundamental attribution error comes to mind.

pointyhat• 15 years ago

I'm not sure it's the software. It seems perfectly ok on my Sony VPCJ1 which is a proper piece of kit with a decent touchscreen.

LearnYouALisp• 15 years ago

I think the "emoticon" is unprofessional.

jarek• 15 years ago

Is this confirmed to be the screen for the final version, or is this just something the devs quickly put in the dev build?

EponymousCoward• 15 years ago

Wonder how long that took to discover. MTTBSOD?

vogonj3• 15 years ago

There's a bug in either VMWare Workstation or the Win8 HAL that leads to it crashing on startup, and that's VMWare Workstation in the screenshot, so... not long. :P

acak• 15 years ago

Microsoft could very well have made this screen some other color (like yellow or red). Would it have been caught out as the new "screen of death" from MS then or would it have been ignored as the software was still a developer preview?

The tendency to tie things in Microsoft's new OSes (Windows Phone 7, Windows 8) to aspects of earlier versions (Windows Mobile, Win XP, Vista) could be one of the things to dog MS as long as it is unwilling to abandon the "Windows" brand (despite being significantly different).

jjcm• 15 years ago

I think consistency in error messages is good though. Sure, bsods were a huge annoyance back in the day. You'd practically be guaranteed to hit one every week. Now though, the system itself is pretty damn stable. My uptimes on my windows 7 machines are all measured in months right now. If something does go wrong though, seeing a bsod will at least let me know immediately that it was a catastrophic failure. It's such an immediately recognizable event that removing it might not be in the users' best interest.

dspillett• 15 years ago

Less imposing than the earlier versions for a non-techie user, but I'd suggest a rewording. "your PC..." will imply a physical hardware fault to a lot of people and that'll not help tech support when it is actually a driver issue (some people can be very difficult to deal with when they've got a mis-diagnosis stuck in their heads).

dismalist• 15 years ago

Oh no's a bug in a pre beta operating system, Windows is obviously a horrible operating system.

vespassassina• 15 years ago

microsoft is the new apple.

laconian• 15 years ago

The kernel panic screen on the Mac really makes users feel cosmopolitan and cool. I feel like I'm riding the monorail to SFO when my Mac crashes:

http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/...

bsphil• 15 years ago

Love how quick people are to assume that Microsoft would just be scrapping the memory dump and error log entirely. Come on folks, you should know that's unintuitive and unnecessary to the average user. Don't get caught up in assuming your skills are anywhere near the norm.

Check Out The New Blue Screen of Death in Windows 8

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