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Microsoft adds QR codes to BSODs in Windows 10
- Theodores 11y agoAll well and good, but on my Linux box the need for an equivalent to BSOD is just not needed, never mind having a QR code on it.
- drivers99 11y agoLinux/UNIX has the equivalent: kernel panic
- noja 11y agoThere was a proposal of stuffing the kernel panic into a qr code in 2012. It never took off: the kernel doesn't want a qr code library and the panic was too big anyway.
- gergles 11y agoThe kernel, no... however, systemd has a QR code library... http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.devel/169082 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.devel/1690... (Money quote: "The QR code stuff is for showing a scannable QR code for the FSS sealing key. It's a gimmick.")
- DanGarcia595 11y agoWhich never seems to happen as often of me
- vollmond 11y agoI'm not sure I've ever seen one, and I've run exclusively *nix on my personal machines for about 8 years. Yet I've seen a lot on the Win10 laptop I just bought a few months ago (mostly due to a broken windows update -- updating again fixed it).
- iamtew 11y agoI've seen plenty of kernel panics at work last year due to faulty hardware, but I can't remember seeing any panics in the past 10 years that's software related.
- pjmlp 11y agoI guess you aren't running X Windows then.
- Someone1234 11y agoOn Windows, Linux, and OS X most kernel panics are caused by one of two things: - Faulty drivers. - Faulty hardware. Linux often runs on server hardware, that helps, but also if you aren't doing desktop Linux you're exposed to fewer potentially faulty drivers. As soon as you enable 3D acceleration and sound Linux crashes about as much as Windows (due to third party closed source drivers). You really have to compare like with like. I think Linux is very stable, but I also think Windows Server is very stable too (doubly so in Core Mode). However Windows or Linux running on a five year old laptop that has clogged up air ducts or failing fans and which gets too hot to touch isn't going to be a stable scenario for any OS. If anything because Windows has been forced to run on such terrible hardware they've done a lot to mitigate it. They've moved sound completely out of kernel space and moved MOST of the graphics stack out too. Now both can crash without causing a BSOD, that's pretty neat.
- berberous 11y agoStill one of the best Tumblr's: http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
- username223 11y agoAlso good: http://wtfqrcodes.com http://wtfqrcodes.com And I am pleased to note that typing "qr robot barf" into DuckDuckGo creates a QR code for "robot barf."
- tommorris 11y agoThe not-so-funny refutation. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Quick_Response_code_scanning https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Quick_Response_c...
- donlzx 11y agoI think this is a bad idea. Now imaging a new channel for all sorts of fake BSODs and out-of-band malicious links in the shown QR codes.
- kabdib 11y agoNow your PC malware can infect your mobile device. Wheee! Microsoft is usually pretty good at modeling security threats these days. I'm surprised they did this, it's a bad idea.
- TorKlingberg 11y agoI really don't see what the problem is here.
- wila 11y agoThe idea they are talking about is most like the scenario where malware throws up a fake BSOD with its own QR code. The user then scans the QR code to open a link to the microsoft website with more details about the BSOD. Except the QR code is fake and it opens a page that is targeted to infect your phone/tablet. Now 2 devices are infected. Yay
- Someone1234 11y agoSeems pretty convoluted to the point of absurdity. If your threat model automatically assumes links are directly proportionate to infections then you're already screwed since getting a user to click a link is insanely easy, and if you had a link that would infect mobile devices you'd likely just drop it on a few news aggregators rather than go through this mess. Threat modeling is about evaluating the risks, including how realistic they are. Your risk model is just unrealistic, you're now infecting PCs with malware for the sole purpose of generating a fake BSOD, which in turn creates a link, which in turn infects mobile devices. Why even infect PCs in that scenario? Seems much MUCH easier to trick mobile users into clicking links OR redirecting them (e.g. AD hijacking). If you really wanted to attack mobile devices from an infected PC you'd likely use their direct USB connection, seems like a much more reliable route. Also may accomplish infections not normally possible from a simple link.
- Pxtl 11y agoAm I the only one flabbergasted at the sheer number of sleep-of-death and BSODs I'm now seeing on Win 10? Two different devices have nosedived in quality, and one's my Surface 3 tablet so MS can't blame the hardware on that one.
- Khao 11y agoI'm having a ton of issues with an Asus laptop that worked perfectly on Win8 and now every time I open it after sleep it's a gamble if I'll get a BSOD or not with "FAULTY_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE"
- ams6110 11y agoI put Windows 10 on an older Dell laptop and it's been a disaster. I like the UI quite a lot but it crashes at least once a day, sometimes more. Granted Dell says that model (Precision M4400) has "not been tested" for Windows 10, and the problem (surprise surprise) seems to be the video driver. I grabbed the latest driver for my card from Nvidia and it didn't really improve things.
- greydot 11y agoI never seem to have the problems others do On my custom built machine at home I've had one BSOD since upgrading to 10 from 7 and that was when it was first released Our Surface Pro 3s and 4s at work have been terrible though, they've always been kinda flaky with 8.1 and 10; I hate working on them
- minikites 11y agoI had tons of blue screens on a brand new home built PC. I tried everything, memtest86+ passed, every driver I could get my hands on was up to date, even ran driver verifier a few times to narrow down which driver it was. Turns out once I updated the BIOS, every problem went away.
- satysin 11y agoI have been running Windows 10 Pro on my ThinkPad T420s since release last July and not had a single system crash. It goes to sleep when I close the lid and wakes up when I open it. No issues. While I have other issues with Windows 10 (the shitty "apps", Twitter and Candy Crush auto-installs on my "Pro" version) I am impressed with how solid it has been for me even on an old and officially unsupported machine.
- johnhattan 11y agoI think my favorite part of the article is the error code in the screenshot. . . "If you call a support person, give them this info: Stop code: MANUALLY_INITIATED_CRASH" I'd actually like to hear that call to tech support :)
- Someone1234 11y agoNot on Windows 10, but back in the day I had a piece of software whose DRM would cause a manual BSOD if the DRM's service became unresponsive when a DRM-consumer was attempting to use it. The BSOD contained zero information about what caused it and said it was an intentionally initiated crash. Figuring out that it was this DRM garbage took quite an effort. This is roughly the 2000 or early XP era.
- johnhattan 11y agoSo basically the software was saying "Somebody might be trying to hack me. So I'm gonna take down the whole system just in case." I assume you REALLY needed that piece of software to put up with that.
- Someone1234 11y ago> I assume you REALLY needed that piece of software to put up with that. Sad part? Yes. I cannot for the life of me remember what the software did, but it had a physical dongle on the serial port (not USB, serial), I think it may have been related to HVAC control but don't quote me on that. Ultimately when I left they were still using the software on its own dedicated machine. Even then it was total junk, but it "worked," so cannot mess with that!
- qjighap 11y agoSo they removed the very specific search engine friendly, but human unreadable code (such as 0x00000f4) and are now requiring me to carry a cell phone with a working QR Code scanner and forcing me to use microsoft (not bing) search support that is specific to their website as a jump point. I am sure that a search for HARD_DRIVE_CRASH will always come up with troubleshooting tips, but I'll have to wade through 5 pages before I get to the advanced topics that I need. I know there is an argument for making this more readable, but if you are at the level of fixing blue screens chances are you can use a search engine.
- Someone1234 11y agoWindows 8 started this. They decided to copy Apple's useless OS X kernel panic screen, and so only give you one word of useful information, no error code, no exception information, etc. Unfortunately the QR code might be an improvement over Windows 8 and 8.1 if the QR code contains more detailed information. There are scenarios where you cannot get to the event viewer (or WinDbg) and need to diagnose a pre-boot BSOD. Windows 8 made this almost impossible without attaching a kernel debugger. Windows 2000 had the best BSODs because they not only told you the details of the crash but also told you which module caused it. This often allowed you to immediately know what the issue was (e.g. if it was in Creative or Nvidia's drives you'd know just from the filename). You can still get the module via WinDbg but it would be useful to have it on the BSOD itself or even in the event log listing. PS - I strongly suspect the reason Microsoft removed the module name in the Windows XP BSOD was because they were hurting third party hardware vendor's reputation.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- geographomics 11y ago> Unfortunately the QR code might be an improvement over Windows 8 and 8.1 if the QR code contains more detailed information. The QR code shown in the example screenshot is just a link to http://windows.com/stopcode http://windows.com/stopcode - hopefully they'll improve it to at least include the bug check code. (QR code decoder output: https://zxing.org/w/decode?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.arstechnica.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F3%2F2016%2F04%2Fwindows-10-qr-code-bsod.jpg https://zxing.org/w/decode?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.arstechnica.ne...)
- satysin 11y agoI like the effort to make things easier but it would have made much more sense to just make use of a short and friendly URL which the user can easily share with someone rather than having to take a photo of a QR core.
- b0t 11y agoOlder users are going to be so confused by this.
- 0xmohit 11y agoWill Microsoft deliver users a smartphone to scan QR codes when they upgrade to Windows 10?