7 ms·
Check Out The New Blue Screen of Death in Windows 8
- chiphazard 15y agoAlthough BSD's are never cool but this one is way better then the old one.
- piers 15y agoLooks like they've finally realised that few people read what's on the BSOD so there's no point in displaying it.
- chiphazard 15y agoHahah. Correct
- vogonj 15y agoau 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.
- piers 15y agoThat as well
- gvkalra 15y agoNext they'll write "Sorry ... Windows just peed .... Please restart to clean up!!"
- redcap 15y agoA 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 15y agoOf 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 15y agoI'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 http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
- beedogs 15y agoI 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.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- darklajid 15y agoHow 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..
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- dfxm12 15y agoI get what you are saying, but now no one has any information about what the problem might be and how to fix it, as opposed to people savvy enough to Google the STOP code (and I think you are underestimating the current population and certainly ignoring people's ability to learn to Google error messages). Sure, there was something psychologically jarring about the old BSOD, but without giving us any clue as to what went wrong with the computer, how is anyone supposed to be able to fix it? Is it impossible to display a STOP code in a friendly manner?
- addandsubtract 15y agoThe new era of function follows form.
- mosburger 15y agoIf you don't want to/can't login to Facebook: http://i.imgur.com/72rry.jpg http://i.imgur.com/72rry.jpg
- m0tive 15y agoI didn't have to login to see it, maybe the permissions on the picture changed?
- raphman 15y agoThanks, I have completely blocked *.facebook.com in my main browser due to privacy concerns.
- chucknthem 15y agoThanks! 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).
- jcitme 15y agoamazon aws micro instances are free for a year. set one up and ssh into it.
- mosburger 15y agoI'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 15y agoWindows 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 15y agoCouldn't really see it from my phone but is that a comma next to 'handle'? Looks like wrong use of a comma.
- Rusky 15y agoA 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 15y agoProblem 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 15y agoThere's ton of crap in search results for STOP codes already.
- Rusky 15y agoThat'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.
- uvTwitch 15y agoIt is Microsoft's problem if Noober McGreenerson searches for that error code and downloads the "fix" that ends up infesting their computer. Most people are more than happy to blame Michaelsoft for their computer shitting the bed after they've installed crapware on it.
- Rusky 15y agoNo, it's Noober McGreenerson's fault for downloading crap from a suspicious site without doing any research. It doesn't matter who Noober is happy to blame, it's still his fault. Yes, it's nice when end users don't have to think, but no, it's not realistic. Microsoft has no direct control over Google- why should they be responsible for what people find there? Should they just leave every piece of useful information off the blue screen so nobody will search? That's what would really be "function follows form."
- Qa8BBatwHxK8Pu 15y agoNow i'll be some what looking forward for my PC to crash on me. Just to see that screen.
- schrototo 15y agoWhy does it use an ASCII emoticon instead of an actual graphic that isn't turned on its side?
- mauriciob 15y agoThat is a 'kernel panic' screen. The lighter, the better.
- wmeredith 15y agoI hate stuff like this. When you or your product just fucked up the UX, it is not the time to be cutesy.
- shriphani 15y agoYou do understand what a BSOD is right ?
- RexRollman 15y agoIs the comma really needed after the word handle?
- fferen 15y agoYes, it comes before a conjunction separating independent clauses. http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/commas.htm http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/commas.htm
- RexRollman 15y agoI think it looks bad when separating only two clauses.
- Raphael 15y agoGoogle Chrome already has this feature. chrome://crash/
- alimbada 15y agoNot anymore it seems.
- troymc 15y agoI 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=95669&hl=en-GB https://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=9...
- smackfu 15y ago"Aw, snap" actually seems even less mature than a frowney face.
- alimbada 15y agoNot anymore it seems.
- jcromartie 15y agoI think you mean about:crash But, yes, it looks like Microsoft took a rather direct cue from Chrome.
- ConstantineXVI 15y 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 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sad_mac.png
- lukeschlather 15y agoLooks 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."
- sneak 15y agoShow that one to a doctor or lawyer.
- toddmorey 15y agoSeems 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.)
- sneak 15y agoAfter 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.
- jroseattle 15y agoIt's pre-beta.
- sneak 15y ago"Put your best foot forward." If they've been working on that nonstop since the iPad launched, and that's the best thing they have to show to the press in September 2011, my point stands.
- jroseattle 15y ago"If they've been working on that nonstop since the iPad launched..." Sounds like you've got it figured out.
- courtewing 15y agoI don't think so. Buggy gestures or minor UI issues such as tiny touch zones are not the consequence of poor product design or direction; they're the consequence of having significantly large software in a very early stage of development. I imagine that people who think bugs in a preview release are somehow a reflection of a company's overall vision or understanding of how their users interact with their computer probably are not going to be very accepting of anything Microsoft does regardless of its merits.
- jarek 15y agoIs this confirmed to be the screen for the final version, or is this just something the devs quickly put in the dev build?
- EponymousCoward 15y agoWonder how long that took to discover. MTTBSOD?
- vogonj 15y agoThere'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 15y agoMicrosoft 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 15y agoI 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 15y agoLess 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 15y agoOh no's a bug in a pre beta operating system, Windows is obviously a horrible operating system.
- vespassassina 15y agomicrosoft is the new apple.
- laconian 15y agoThe 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/TS3742/TS3742_01_KP-001-en.jpg http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/...
- bsphil 15y agoLove 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.