Longhorn: Fewer BSODs, More RSODs

Jan Theofel writes "Windows Loghorn will present you less BSOD. Joi Ito reports that Windows Longorn will get additional ROSD (red screen of death) for 'really bad errors.' So you will get less BSOD but some new RSOD. You can find a ROSD screenshot in a virtual machine in his weblog entry."

Comments

BSOD

[Dante Shamest]

I've not seen one of those in a long, long time.

Re:BSOD

[Artega VH]

You can actually set it so that when your computer BSOD's it will simply reset. Discovered this when my graphics card was continually causing the kernel (with the graphics card driver) to memory dump.

Perhaps someone can help out with the setting..

Re:BSOD

[NetNifty]

To change "reset instead of BSOD", right-click "My Computer", hit properties, advanced tab, startup and recovery, and set automatically restart.

Re:BSOD

[Sparr0]

It is green. Everyone with an xbox knows that.

Re:BSOD

[dmaxwell]

That's nice in theory but it doesn't always work. You also get this problem if the replacement mobo has a different "acpi personality" than the old one. I've made sysprep images with the generic IDE controllers and still came to tears over that issue.

Re:BSOD

[Myen]

No, it restarts the machine.

(If it could just restart explorer, that means it's recoverable and in user-space. I.e., not a BSoD, which happens in kernel-space. After all, explorer is just a shell.)

And yes the restarting is a pain, since then you have no idea what just happened. Even worse is when it happens on boot - yay restart loop. AFAICT, checking the event log does not give all the information available in the BSoD.

Re:BSOD

[Fourmica]

How to disable restarting after a BSOD, which is turned on by default in Windows XP:

My Computer - > Properties -> Advanced -> Startup and Recovery -> Settings

In the "System Failure" section, uncheck "Automatically Restart".

Spelling

[imemyself]

An error occurred transferring exectuion. I guess M$ isn't even using developers who know English?

Page already Slashdotted...

[Ninwa]

Dont forget NetworkMirror :)

http://www.networkmirror.com/adYJGbG8ajC3f55y/joi. ito.com/archives/2005/05/07/bsod_upgrades_to_rsod_ in_longhorn.html

Re:Page already Slashdotted...

[dotpavan]

and there is mirrordot and it doesnt have that many ads as n/w mirror and looks a lot better than n/w mirror

Alternate View

[guaigean]

Well, here's a link to the pic... til I get slashdotted... http://209.193.18.52/RedScreen.jpg

Re:Give me my any-color-but-blue SOD!

[eggz128]

If Microsoft is really smart [...], they would allow admins to change the color of the Screen Of Death anyway they like.

You can to a degree.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I see BSOD's a lot.

[blincoln]

If you are seeing BSODs almost daily, you either have faulty hardware or some seriously buggy drivers. Honestly folks, XP, and even 2000, BSOD very rarely.

Exactly. I have never seen my XP machine at home BSOD, even when the video card was failing to the point that it was adding random horizontal lines across the display.

At work, I saw 2000 BSOD on several servers when we applied an MS hotfix that conflicted with some sort of secret kernel patch they'd given us a few years previously for those same machines.

I saw 2k bluescreen one other time, when a workstation had a zip drive and the user installed drivers for it from 1997 or so.

Other than that, the only time I've seen it happen is if I make an OS image on one machine and then try and use it on another with different hardware. That's still stupid, but at least I know how to avoid it.

This is in an environment with close to 1000 Windows servers and about 25,000 Windows workstations.

Re:I see BSOD's a lot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that the default behavoir in XP is to automatically restart instead of showing the BSOD. My Computer Properties > Advanced > Startup and Recovery Setting, under system failure automatically restart is checked by default. So that's the main reason you don't see them as often. Although I have only ever seen one when I had some faulty RAM installed in my system.

Re:New Feature

[jZnat]

Actually, it'd be the "Magenta Screen of Death" (#FF00FF).

How to get a Red screen of Death even in '95

[Artifakt]

Edit your system.ini file as follows:

Under the [386Enh] header, add these two lines:

MessageTextColor=B
MessageBackColor=3

That will give you a bright cyan text on dark cyan background screen of death. Feel free to substitute other colors 0-F as desired. This works in 95, 98, and Me, at least. Red's in there somewhere - don't remember exactly where - just try a pair of values, wait the usual 15 minutes for a SOD, and see if you like the combination. I can honestly say I haven't seen a BSOD on my screen in months.

Re:How to get a Red screen of Death even in '95

[PetoskeyGuy]

Windows 95/98 is still a DOS base, so it uses the basic VGA color codes...

0 black
1 blue
2 green
3 cyan
4 red
5 magenta
6 brown
7 light gray
8 dark gray
9 light blue
A light green
B light cyan
C light red
D light magenta
E yellow
F white

Go nuts customizing your 10 year old OS!! :P

Re:New Feature

[niteice]

Only in 3.x/9x. NT kernels have white-on-blue hardcoded. (if you have the leaked source, i think it's bugcheck.c)

Red screens indicate(d) ACPI errors

[danshapiro]

Red screens were introduced in '98 to indicate ACPI errors:

http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/a/acpi.htm

I believe the redscreen code is turned off in release builds, meaning you are not likely to see one.

Filled color screens

[GQuon]

What Ziviyr (95582) is referring to, are errors even worse than the Guru Meditation (software failure).

Certain hardware errors would turn the screen into one single color like red, yellow and green.

Red : ROM Error - Reseat or replace
Green : CHIP RAM error (reset AGNUS and re-test)
Blue : Custom Chip(s) Error
Yellow : 68000 detected error before software trapped it (GURU)
Black : No CPU

Amiga System Startup Colours

Personally, I've seen a lot of red screens on an Amiga 600 that I sent in for replacement. I've seen the yellow screen a couple of times, and I think I might have seen the green one. I've never seen an Amiga blue-screen or black-screen.

I did see the Guru Meditation (later renamed Software Failure) many times, and its less serious brother, the "Recoverable Alert" -- a Guru Meditation with yellow text and frame on black background that you could just click away to let the program continue.

In the new Amiga OS4, the crash handler is called the "Grim Reaper" and comes with several functions for debugging, as well as choices to kill the offending application, contiue running, or rebooting the system.

Re:How much have you gotten BSOD'ed recently.

[smellystudent]

All the BSOD's I've seen recently have been traced back to bad RAM.

Re:How much have you gotten BSOD'ed recently.

[Cro Magnon]

When I ran Win95, it would BSOD 5+ times a day. Once, it went down 15 times! I counted them! When we switched to NT4, it went down several times a week, instead of several times a day. So far, I haven't seen a BSOD on XP.