Microsoft Tests New 'Green Screen of Death' On Latest Windows 10 Builds (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Windows 10 Insider builds will now feature Green Screen of Death (GSOD) instead of the classic Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error page we have all become accustomed to. The change was teased on Twitter by Matthijs Hoekstra, Senior Program Manager for Windows Enterprise Developer Platform, and spotted by a user that goes by the nickname of Chris123NT. According to Hoekstra, only Windows 10 Insider builds will feature the green error screen, while stable Windows 10 versions will continue to use the classic blue-themed error page. Hoekstra didn't elaborate on the reasons behind the color change, but the color-coded error screens would allow Microsoft support staff to triage bugs and prioritize customers.

Comments

Microsoft finally fixed the BSOD

[richrz]

They turned it green.

Re:Microsoft finally fixed the BSOD

[TheRaven64]

The XBox has had a Green Screen of Death since quite early on. In one of the early demos, it blue-screened while Bill Gates was showing it off. He told the engineers that it must never blue screen again... so they made it green. I suspect that making it green on pre-release versions is simply to make it obvious that it isn't a production version that's crashed. You expect some instability if you're running a testing version and if someone takes photos of it crashing then it's easy to point at and say 'it's green, it's a beta'.

Re:Microsoft finally fixed the BSOD

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

They turned it green.

This is the forward-thinking kind of innovation that makes Microsoft so awesome.

Rainbow of Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

In another 90 years, they'll have run out of the visible spectrum, and we'll get the Ultra-Violet Screen of Death.

Re:Rainbow of Failure

[Holi]

That will be for hardware errors only, software errors will have an infrared screen o' death. It will be great for the blind as they will be able to feel the error.

Re:Rainbow of Failure

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Holi, I noticed your sig and it made me wonder...

"Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy."

So does that mean that gingers pass through unchanged?

Re:Color coded errors

[TWX]

I used to agree with you. Honestly I did.

Then I realized that the vast majority of users were not going to read what was on the screen. Even if the Helpdesk person asked them what the error said they were not going to be able to provide any useful feedback. Hell, users used to be instructed to call-in when the antivirus software popped up, and even then we couldn't get useful info, half of the time they thought "Win32" was the name of the virus as part of "Win32/..."

Forget about getting the user to find on that field of text the actual name of the process or executable that generated the fault.

Re:stable Windows 10 versions

[gweihir]

There are stable versions of Windows 10? Oh, right, they mean versions where the spying on user activities and data works reliably.

Godzilla

[LordKronos]

Green screen? Like the video production technique? I welcome error screens that allow us to composite in Godzilla destroying our unsaved documents.

Ha! I'm red/green color blind

[rsilvergun]

no more crashes for me. I hope rest of you yahoos with your working rods and cones enjoy your crashtastic computers.

Re:green color blind

[PingSpike]

Right, it'll say "Something happened" with a frown emoji. The message will still be crystal clear even to dogs.

Hoekstra? We ain't no Apple users.

[Opportunist]

We don't care what color you paint the turd. Fix the security and privacy problems your system has, until you do this, color us unimpressed.

Re:Changing the colors is not enough.

[PPH]

Sell advertising space?

Re: green color blind

[Kaenneth]

You'll figure that out when you try to read the log file from the disk.

PC ran into a problem

[suman28]

First, my PC is quite stationary. The first thing I did when I stood up my PC was to chop off its legs, so it can't run into anything including problems. Second of all, if my PC has issues, why does Microsoft recommend that I restart? I strongly feel that it should be my computer that restarts to resolve problems

Re: Wow

[Holi]

If you are getting constant BSODs you have a piece of bad hardware. It's pretty much a flat out lie now a days to say they are part of the windows experience.