3 ms·

This is a definite upgrade over a frozen screen.

by mouse_ 2y ago

freedomben 2y ago
Yes and no though. The frozen screen can be immensely helpful when you can see what happened immediately before. Obviously it's a gamble, but sometimes I'll have a terminal with logs on it on the frozen screen which can then be photographed and researched. On Windows I hate that I lose all the context of what I was doing when the BSOD hits. Sometimes you can't even remember which app you were using. I hope this just takes a small amount of screen and doesn't erase everything, and/or can be disabled.
- tredre3 2y ago
  I think you are misinformed in regards to what Windows can give you after a BSOD. By default, logs are captured and kernel memory is dumped which includes list of active processes and stacks. You can configure it to dump the entire memory of all active processes as well, or the entire computer's memory. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/enabling-a-kernel-mode-dump-file https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/varieties-of-kernel-mode-dump-files https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d...
  - freedomben 2y ago
    Thanks, that does seem useful knowledge, although a stacktrace and memory dump aren't super helpful to me, because on Windows I'm the end user, not a kernel or driver dev. Much more useful is being able to see what application I was using and/or what button I clicked immediately before the crash. Sometimes it's an asynchronous process or background-task hardware failure that has nothing to do with the foreground task, but often there's something in the foreground that can give some helpful clues about the chain of events that led to the crash. If the BSOD could be configured to take a screenshot on crash that would be even better than a frozen screen, but I suspect the complexity of implementing such a thing would be significant.

This is a definite upgrade over a frozen screen.

by mouse_ 2y ago

This is a definite upgrade over a frozen screen.

Yes and no though. The frozen screen can be immensely helpful when you can see what happened immediately before. Obviously it's a gamble, but sometimes I'll have a terminal with logs on it on the frozen screen which can then be photographed and researched. On Windows I hate that I lose all the context of what I was doing when the BSOD hits. Sometimes you can't even remember which app you were using. I hope this just takes a small amount of screen and doesn't erase everything, and/or can be disabled.

tredre3 2y ago
I think you are misinformed in regards to what Windows can give you after a BSOD. By default, logs are captured and kernel memory is dumped which includes list of active processes and stacks. You can configure it to dump the entire memory of all active processes as well, or the entire computer's memory. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/enabling-a-kernel-mode-dump-file https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/varieties-of-kernel-mode-dump-files https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d...
- freedomben 2y ago
  Thanks, that does seem useful knowledge, although a stacktrace and memory dump aren't super helpful to me, because on Windows I'm the end user, not a kernel or driver dev. Much more useful is being able to see what application I was using and/or what button I clicked immediately before the crash. Sometimes it's an asynchronous process or background-task hardware failure that has nothing to do with the foreground task, but often there's something in the foreground that can give some helpful clues about the chain of events that led to the crash. If the BSOD could be configured to take a screenshot on crash that would be even better than a frozen screen, but I suspect the complexity of implementing such a thing would be significant.